I've done a lot of webapp development in both Java and Rails. I would agree that the iteration cycle is shorter in Rails, but it's not as bad as your description makes it sound. If you have to redeploy a jar file as part of your development process, then that's a problem with your process, not your language.
When I do Java webapp development in Eclipse, it compiles and hot-swaps my code in the background without requiring any restart or redeployments. Works pretty well.
I do have to restart occasionally because the hot-swapping has limitations, so that does slow things down a bit, but when you consider the time saved by having good compiler integration, then I don't think there's a big difference in productivity.
Re:Web Applications Should Be Compiled
by baguasquirrel on Tuesday June 02, 2009 @06:24PM
(#638775)
Good point. Thanks for the tip! :)
That said, I don't need no stinkin IDE integration for .psps. Being able to log in remotely and edit something with vi is kind of handy.
You just can't do that in compiled languages, and the compiled language of choice for the web-- Java --isn't known for blazing compilation speed. You'd probably also have to jar it up and copy the damn thing over, whereas psps could be modified in-place. I think this is something that compiled folks like me simply failed to grasp: all the things about scripting languages that make them orders of magnitude faster for developing, especially for the web.