Ruby
It’s not a secret that our company places a bet on this interpreted scripting language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto in the far 1995. A bunch of deep-rooted technologies like Smalltalk, Python, Perl, Ada, C++, and others had an impact on shaping Ruby’s syntax and features. As a result, we got a technology known for elegant and expressive coding, as well as increased flexibility and productivity of development. It means that engineers take pleasure in writing code with Ruby and are not restricted in their vision on how to execute one thing or another.
Java
Despite Railsware’s unhidden preference towards Matsumoto’s brainchild, Java is also a part of our team’s arsenal. For example, we leveraged it together with other technologies within the Philips Directlife project. That’s to say, we know both of them and are happy to use whichever language best suits the task at hand.
In a sign of numerous Java and Ruby differences to be described a bit later, there is one undisputed similarity – they were born in the same year. Nevertheless, since then, Java has come through 11 versions with Java SE 11 as the latest one (compared to the Ruby’s latest release of 2.6.0). The technologies that influenced the creation of Java include C++, Ada 83, Object Pascal and others.
The TIOBE index shows that this compiled programming language overcame C in ranking and holds the first position as of the end of 2018. Moreover, it is a primary technology for Android native app development, which by the way was recently enhanced with Kotlin. Another facet of Java is that it is also an ecosystem of tools including Java Development Kit (JDK) for writing/running/compiling Java code, Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for running software built with Java and JVM languages within the same infrastructure to some degree of interoperability (for example, Kotlin for expressiveness and conciseness, Scala for functional programming, etc.), and Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for running Java apps. The basic points why developers opt for this technology are its reliability, platform independence, and ease of use.
Explanation:
The readers of our blog have already had a chance to get to know the duel of Ruby vs. PHP, as well as the combat Python vs. Ruby vs. Node.js. Today, we have Java vs. Ruby in turn.
Traditionally, we’re going to look at both technologies from a product owner’s perspective, which means learning not only technical differences between the languages, but also their actual use across different projects. Here we go.
Warm-up
Before any competition, the contestants need to warm up. It also happens that this term is used by one of the wrestlers, Java, for the lazy class loading of Java Virtual Machine. So, let’s not step out of line and have the competitors spiffed up to the battle.
Ruby
It’s not a secret that our company places a bet on this interpreted scripting language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto in the far 1995. A bunch of deep-rooted technologies like Smalltalk, Python, Perl, Ada, C++, and others had an impact on shaping Ruby’s syntax and features. As a result, we got a technology known for elegant and expressive coding, as well as increased flexibility and productivity of development. It means that engineers take pleasure in writing code with Ruby and are not restricted in their vision on how to execute one thing or another.
At the same time, this technology cannot be called popular. According to the TIOBE index as of December 2018, it is ranked 17th. Nevertheless, the language is not dying and keep afloat with the 3.0 version expected to be released in 2020. To sum up, Ruby allows programmers to enjoy what they do and be productive at once by following the principle of least astonishment.
Ruby key features
Apart from comparing Ruby to Java, let’s take a look at some key things one should know about this gem of a language.
Open-source
Interpreted language
Multi-platform
Dynamic + duck typing
Has a smart garbage collector
Everything including methods, numbers and variable is an object
You can embed Ruby into HTML
High scalability
Applicable for writing CGIs, building web and intranet apps
Support of different GUI tools including OpenGL, Tcl/Tk, and GTK
Support of Sybase, Oracle, MySQL, and DB2 connection
