In the canon of anti-Java / Pro Ruby articles, none has achieved the center of attention more swiftly than the one written last month by blogger-developer Obie Fernandez, who self-describes himself as "committed to making the world of software development a more enjoyable, productive place." His posting on Why Java Sucks Ass, which was written mostly just to rub the fur of Java developers the wrong way, is still doing the rounds of the Internet, attracting rebuttals.

Fernandez received immediate critiicism for his over-the-top tone and, above all, for his apparent disregard for accuracy. "Java has its Hani [Hani Suleiman, author of the Bileblog ] and now Ruby/Rails has Obie!" wrote one commenter to his original posting.

Another snapped: "What a load of incoherent nonsense. You were obviously a failed Java hack who couldn't make sense of the Java world so you make excuses for it. Ruby/Rails is NOWHERE near enterprise grade, and may not even get there. If you're happy doing mashups and brainless crud websites, stick with Ruby."

A somewhat more measured rebuttal came from Daniel Spiewak , who called four of Fernandez's ten point "just plain absurd" and - inevitably - offered up his own "10 Reasons Why Ruby Sucks Ass," which were as follows:

1. Ruby has no real identity
   
2. Most Ruby programmers are morons
   
3. Ruby doesn't have decent tool support
   
4. Rubyists are obsessed with Ruby on Rails
   
5. Ruby is too slow
   
6. Ruby's debugger is a joke
   
7. Ruby has an annoying community
   
8. Ruby has DHH
   
9. Ruby has an extremely complex syntax
   
10. Ruby doesn't have Duke

Spiewak's reasoning for each point can be found here. For point 7, he expands it as follows:

"Seriously, I can't go three pages on Ruby sites without reading "Rails this" or "DHH that" or, even better "Java sucks because blah". Live and let live people! Recognize that just because your toy language happens to satisfy your use case, it doesn't necessary make it satisfy mine."

Enough said.

One member of the Rails community takes Fernandez to task, as follows:

"I don't think, especially at this stage, Rails needs or should look to promote itself by belittling other technologies. Rails is an attractive choice for web application development on its own merits. As a community, vitriol makes us look defensive and closed minded."

As for Fernandez himself, he maintains that the barrage of criticism simply misses the point that his original post was written with deliberate excess:

"Dung in my trumpet is more like it. Most of the commenters didn't get the hyperbole."

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