Ruby, Java Book Stacks
A couple years ago I published this picture taken by Darrin Weissinger of the necessary Java books for a J2EE stack and the equivalent Ruby books for a Rails stack. It was an instant mime. I got to read a large influx of criticism about how the picture was right and it wasn't a true comparison.
Well it sure as hell was a true comparison because it was my working desk, from a real project. May not apply to your environment, but it was my reality. It was what I needed to work in each environment. In 2 weeks we went further than months of floundering in J2EE, in an unfamiliar language on an "enterprise" application. The results of this have been recorded here. The picture simply shows the bloat that is known as J2EE. I sold the book stack on eBay.
I get asked today, with all the flood of Ruby and Rails books coming onto the market should I redo the picture. My answer is "No", as I've only bought a 2nd edition of the Agile Web Development book and given away the 1st edition. It's still the only two books really needed to do web development in Ruby on Rails. The rest, are icing and fractional improvment.
What's really telling is Rod Johnson, author of the Spring Application Framework, giving a biting criticism of the J2EE stack at JAOO Sept 2006. It's a vindication of the picture, by someone who suffered through the stack. What's even more damning about the whole thing is when he starts showing examples of the "right way to do it" in JRuby. It's pretty bad when one of your own stars calls it all a failure, and shows examples in another language about how it should be done.
What really amazes me is the number of Java fan-boys who will rant and rave to this day about how J2EE is "Enterprise" and Rails isn't. Enterprise has made my list of corporate double speak terms. It's basically used as a verbal poison against any technology that someone is afraid of. "We can't use that technology, it's no enterprise application. Sometimes used to show how impressive something is. It's new, it's improved, it's ENTERPRISE, buddy! In both cases, no evaluation of merits is performed, it's just marketing hype for a political end, bandied about for those who prefer not to think for themselves.