How this article makes it clear that objective-c, java, or ... is more maintainable or easier to work with, is beyond me.
They offer a perfectly good hypothesis, actually: Obj-C and Java are older and more mature.
That has obvious drawbacks: It would be impossible to redesign Java, now, to the extent that Rails 3 just got redesigned. But, though certain Java libraries may suck, you can rest assured that they will suck in exactly the same way in five years. Not so with Rails. The platform moves, and you have to move as well.
Another obvious point is that Rails (a) just went through a big version change, which just happens to coincide with a push toward Ruby 1.9; that double-whammy is bound to produce some yelps of pain; and (b) Rails is slowly maturing as well. Sooner or later Rails will be as mature as Java is today. How will we know when that has happened? When occasional gentle rants like this one turn into numerous, big, influential rants about the prospect of breaking backward compatibility; that will be a sign that the cost of change outweighs the benefit. And then it will be time for a new framework to inherit the role of young upstart...
At my work, I noticed a very similar issue to your point (a) when our iPhone app started to show a decent number of bugs when iOS4 dropped. 3rd party libraries may or may not be future proof and their support may or may not be available in the future.
They offer a perfectly good hypothesis, actually: Obj-C and Java are older and more mature.
That has obvious drawbacks: It would be impossible to redesign Java, now, to the extent that Rails 3 just got redesigned. But, though certain Java libraries may suck, you can rest assured that they will suck in exactly the same way in five years. Not so with Rails. The platform moves, and you have to move as well.
Another obvious point is that Rails (a) just went through a big version change, which just happens to coincide with a push toward Ruby 1.9; that double-whammy is bound to produce some yelps of pain; and (b) Rails is slowly maturing as well. Sooner or later Rails will be as mature as Java is today. How will we know when that has happened? When occasional gentle rants like this one turn into numerous, big, influential rants about the prospect of breaking backward compatibility; that will be a sign that the cost of change outweighs the benefit. And then it will be time for a new framework to inherit the role of young upstart...