If the Only Tool You Have is a Hammer…
Mark Imbriaco is a system administrator with 37signals, the creators of Ruby on Rails. Would it surprise you to hear that 37signals doesn’t use Rails for every task?
Fanboys
The pejorative term fanboy (or fangirl) is applied to anyone who accepts a particular technology no matter what reality says. One might expect 37signals to be a gang of Rails zealots given that they created the framework. Not true. This video gives a brief glimpse of the company’s internal reasoning process.
Use the Right Tool
Rails isn’t fast enough for some of the tasks that 37signals needs to perform in house. Some tasks require the performance of the C) programming language. Other tasks are better suited for Erlang). In this video, Imbriaco shares the reasons why he chose Erlang as a backend tool for his bag of tricks. Key points in the video:
- How he was introduced to Erlang.
- How he developed his Erlang skills.
- Where he went for learning materials on Erlang.
- The likely winner in a fight between Erlang and Rails.
Imbriaco’s approach to learning work wells with other subject matter too.
Business View
If you’re a business owner, the kind of person who hires software developers to create products, why do you care about this message? Because when your company is making decisions about what tools to use, it’s important to use the right tool for a given task. Rails and Ruby get tons of positive publicity, and rightly so. However, sometimes a different language is a better fit.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.