Why aren't c# programmers drawn to ruby as java programmers are

Question

This is a trend I've noticed. There is a very large adoption of ruby from the java community. Is it that c# is such an awesome language + having good tools over java that most c# developers aren't as keen to switching to ruby permanently as java developers are?

What are your opinions?

Answer 1

C# is a modern, and quite powerful language, sporting:

1. Lambdas (closures)
2. Continuations (yield)
3. Value types
4. Properties
5. Type inference
6. Pass-by-reference

...just to name a few.

These features make a transition from C# to Ruby far less attractive than a transition from Java to Ruby.

Answer 2

Because .NET is part of a coherent environment which includes developer tools, database links, orm management GUI front ends, net front ends etc. etc.

Java is a language! There are losts of piecemeal bits and pieces which do all of the above, but, the quality varies considerably. From something like Apache POI which is a better interface to MS Office documents than MS provides to the abysmal J2EE stack which half does in a very complicated way what .NET does in a simple and elegant way.

Whereas for Enterprise level, millions of transactions, bullet proof, fast never lose your data all the extra work putting together J2EE, JDBC, Spring, Hibernate etc.etc. etc. is actually worth it, for a quick simple Web to Database app its just too painful, hence the attraction to ROR. On the other hand while .NET can scale up to the big stuff (not as well as J2EE! ) it is still reasonably straightforward to do a small application.

Answer 3

I see two reasons:

1. It seems to me that the biggest benefits of switching to Ruby for a Java developer are closures and dynamic type inference. Both of these can be found in C#.
2. .NET benefits from a rather tight integration with the Windows platform - (COM interop, WPF, easy installation), making it more difficult to switch from .NET to something else.