I was less comparing AppFuse against Rails – but really comparing what Ruby on Rails has done for the Ruby language and what AppFuse *could* attempt to do for Java.

Ruby has generators and other types of utilities that do add Authentication, Signup, etc. What’s nice is that you generate them – instead of having a bloated framework of which you have all these wonderful capabilities – of which you only use 75%.

Sometimes, less is more. If you can however have access – through plugins, generators, what not – to these extended capabilities, I think you have something powerful.

Java has gotten into too much bloat – where everything is jammed into the JDK, into the J2EE for the containers, and what not. Library dependency versioning in Java is now akin to DLL hell for Microsoft. At least, that’s been my experience.

I’m not trying to cast Ruby as a better language than Java – although I think that it has a lot of merits and I enjoy both languages. What I am a believer in is that Ruby and its associated infrastructure, such as Rails and Gems, has solved some of the core problems that plague Java projects today (and in the past).

Too often with Java projects (at large), sophistication translates into complication. I don’t think this is very good and certainly shouldn’t always be required. I think a loose example if Rake versus Maven. I could write a whole blog post on these types of comparisons (and probably will, or maybe you should?).

Thanks for commenting.

Where is all that for Rails?