Thanks to both of you, Philippe and Pascal, for some challenging insight, got 
me thinking a lot.

Yes there's a lot of stuff for Java, that's really great. That's also why I 
like Scala and Clojure so much, but the frameworks aren't ready yet. Do you 
have any experience with Lift? Or Play?

One thing I really like about RoR is Ruby, it's so much better than Java. Is 
Java really a good language for a startup? I'm not sure. I also stumbled across 
Sinatra, what a revelation...
I've read your link, Philippe, but there are also some interesting comments...

Deployment on the other hand is one of the things with WebObjects which gives 
me a constant headache, WOMonitor has a lot of issues (e.g. doesn't restart 
scheduled apps, or a lot of time outs) and I never managed to deploy a WO app 
in a Servlet container.


Bye,
- Marius


On 25.09.2011, at 15:51, Philippe Rabier wrote:

> Agree with Pascal. 
> 
> And think about all interesting good quality framework available everywhere 
> (apache projects, quartz scheduler, Jboss community projects … and of course 
> wonder). 
> 
> If I dare, I would say that if your project  entices enough, it should be not 
> too difficult to hire java developers. The good point, if they don't know WO, 
> they bring with them other skills you maybe don't have. That was the case for 
> me. 
> 
> About RoR, we made a big development with this technology for a one of our 
> client but we didn't go further. There are beautifull things (unit testing, 
> deployment, migration…) but we saw also many crap projects developed quickly. 
> And ruby is a very nice language but not so easy to understand quickly. 
> 
> And I read that rails 3.x is very different from rails 2.x. So would you 
> start a new project with rails 2 because there are more developers? No easy 
> answer. 
> 
> Note there are also big discussions in the rails community:
> http://blog.stevecoast.com/what-the-hell-is-happening-to-Rails
> 
> Regarding your last question, I don't have good answers because for all the 
> reasons I gave you, I start new projects with Wonder. But we start to look at 
> node.js because it's a very promising technology IMHO. 
> 
> Philippe 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On 25 sept. 2011, at 13:36, Pascal Robert <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> One thing that I like a lot with Java (including WO) is that deployment on 
>> multiple platforms is much easier that other environments. This is 
>> especially true if you are selling products that customers will install it 
>> themselves. Try to install a tool like CalendarServer (Python-based) on 
>> CentOS and see how much pain it is. Windows support for node.js was added 
>> in... July 2011, and it's declared "beta" quality.
>> 
>> And Java = less breaking APIs. It's incredible the number of times of moving 
>> from, say Python 2.4 to 2.5, will break APIs. Again, Java people try to 
>> avoid that. And Java also have a lot of quality libraries. Search for MySQL 
>> for node.js, at least 5 "drivers" exist. So that means you will probably 
>> have to try the 5 of them to see which one works best.
>> 
>> Java and WO are not perfect, but I prefer something stable than API and 
>> deployment problems.
>> 
>>> Hi Philippe,
>>> 
>>> thanks for your answer, interesting points.
>>> 
>>> It would be only one WO developer, joined by a Front-end developer and a 
>>> third developer yet to be hired.
>>> 
>>> It's easy to find Java developers, the question is how many of them 
>>> actually want to learn WebObjects. I'm the CTO in a small company and this 
>>> is actually a big difficulty when hiring people. Some are interested, most 
>>> are not.
>>> 
>>> My friend has basic knowledge in Rails and some other technologies. I think 
>>> he won't start until december so he could manage to get up to speed until 
>>> then. Of curse it's not the same level as his current knowledge of WO.
>>> The main argument in favor of Rails would be that it's quite easy to find 
>>> competent people who already know the framework.
>>> 
>>> I'll also let him know to look into Node.js. Do you have hands-on 
>>> experience, is it mature enough? Maybe I should also suggest using Clojure 
>>> and ClojureScript, but it would be even harder to find people for that :)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> - Marius
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 25.09.2011, at 12:06, Philippe Rabier wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Marius,
>>>> 
>>>> I have several developers who were new at WO in 2 different companies. The 
>>>> main point is that they knew java. 
>>>> 
>>>> All the problem talked by Pascal and other regarding documentation for 
>>>> example are important for a new developer that can not be trained/coached 
>>>> by another one. But that's not your case. For example, we hired a 10 years 
>>>> java skilled developer who used jdbc at low level (writing SQL code by 
>>>> hand) in their previous companies. Believe me that he found WO  "magical". 
>>>> He was able to write code in less than a month. And i saw several other 
>>>> developers like him. 
>>>> 
>>>> We have also a student for 6 month who comes from University where he 
>>>> learnt a lot of java and it was a matter of weeks. 
>>>> 
>>>> If you are 2 WO developers, I would recommend you start alone because you 
>>>> will go faster (hiring people, training… takes time). If you need 10 
>>>> developers, it's not a lean startup ;-)
>>>> 
>>>> When you have  existing code (clean and with some pieces of java doc), it 
>>>> will help you to include new developers because it will be easy for you to 
>>>> explain, you will have include your own patterns, …
>>>> 
>>>> About RoR or other stuffs like PHP, if you don't know them, don't use 
>>>> them. You can't be fast and learn something new at the same time. If you 
>>>> know only  COBOL, use COBOL. But if you want to consider something new, 
>>>> look at node.js. For me, and I'm not alone to think that: using the sane 
>>>> language on the client and server side is a key factor in productivity and 
>>>> all the team speak the same language. 
>>>> 
>>>> Philippe
>>>> 
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>> 
>>>> On 24 sept. 2011, at 20:38, Marius Soutier <[email protected]> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Hi there,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I know this a difficult and opinionated topic, but I have been asked by a 
>>>>> friend what technology to choose for a Lean Startup (= 3 months until the 
>>>>> first minimum viable product). While he and I know WebObjects quite well, 
>>>>> I think it's safe to say there are only few people here in Germany who 
>>>>> know it at all. I'm personally convinced (and have seen this affirmed by 
>>>>> the two WOWODC talks about Lean Startup and Fluffy Bunny, excellent talks 
>>>>> by the way) that WO itself is a great technology to get things up and 
>>>>> running very fast. However, what if the business grows and he needs to 
>>>>> hire more people?
>>>>> 
>>>>> My first question is - do you easily find skilled people who are willing 
>>>>> to learn WebObjects? What's your experience on this?
>>>>> 
>>>>> And the second question would be - how long does it take them to be 
>>>>> productive, i.e. write working code without much help. I'm assuming here 
>>>>> the person knows Java quite well and is eager to learn new stuff.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The alternative would be Ruby on Rails, which seems quite popular in 
>>>>> startups nowadays.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks for your insight!
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> - Marius
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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