Ruby on Windows

I’ve been sitting for the past ten minutes decided whether to clear most of my Cubase projects off of my spare drive and install Debian on it. I should probably have a Linux installation around anyway, but I rarely find myself using it as a desktop nearly enough to justify the space. So why is today any different? I’ve been using Ruby on Rails for a while now, and so far I’ve somehow managed to supress my frustration with the speed of the Ruby interpreter. But I’m slowly getting to the point where I need to do something about it. On my Linux based dedicated server, it takes a mere second or three to boot up a Mongrel instance, while here on Windows it can take up to ten. Even running a simple “Hello, World!” takes a few seconds to execute in my Microsoft hell (more on that later.. suffice to say I will not be upgrading to Vista..).

So what can I do about it? Well first off I can move to another platform. Ruby is pretty swift under both Linux and OS X, but I can’t afford a decent Mac yet. Moving to Linux is a viable option, but brings with it another set of complications. For example, I use Flash, and Fireworks, and Photoshop. Nearly everything I use is either cross platform or available for multiple targets and I’ve exerted considerable effort in my ten years as a software engineer to make that happen. Sure I can use Gimp for image manipulation, but it’s not Photoshop. And the majority of the files I’m sent by designers are Photoshop files. Sure Gimp opens them now, but does it support the latest PSD format? I have no idea. What if Adobe update the format again? How quickly will Gimp provide support for it? Will I have to change my workflow again? I can work around most things. For example I just got used to using E for my Ruby on Rails work, and I really like it, but I’ve changed IDE before and I can change it again, no biggie. And a Linux version of E is planned for the future, so there’s every chance it would become part of my workflow again. But not all of my concerns are as simple as which editor I use to write my code. Most of my questions can probably be answered simply and quickly, but they will be nagging concerns in the stability of the way I work for the forseeable future.

August 12, 2007 | Filed Under ramblings 

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