Ruby on Rails experience of a java developer
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Although it has not been a long time since I started to develop a small rails application, I would like to share notes.
the first point ,for me and for all the Java developers like me, should be: “what kind of language is this ???” 
yes it is not structured and well defined like Java , there are lots of tricks going around. Even the simple for loops seems complex.
and for such a tricky language you cannot expect to find a full-functional CTRL-SPACE support. and for me it is still a pain.
To save yourself from any more pain I would suggest you to setup your environment with instantRails and aptana radrails.
however after you get used to this alien language, you would start to enjoy it. that is what started to do. I really understood the real meaning of light-weight and agile. Although I do feel myself as secure and powerful as in Java, I still enjoyed it.
what was missing grails?
almost a year ago I tried grails also, I have seen some sparkles in it but that wasn’t the tool I have been looking for. it was not agile, the development cycle is painful. it was a pre-configured spring-hibernate setup with groovy.
the pain of grails does come from its power actually, spring-hibernate. it is really HEAVY.
The Sparkles
I don’t have too much experience, but I can easily say, development with it is way faster than Java or grails and way powerful than PHP.if you are looking for easy way to develop a web site that is the language you should look first. It has good and simple web-life cycle and built in support for web standard like json,xml and ajax.
The Volcano: Java
Although rails has good point it is not as powerful as java, and it is not complete alternative to java either.(don’t hesitate to post your comments). So for the moment I am searching for integration strategies.
