> What? Ruby and Java aren't even comparable -- not to say one is "better", only to say that they aren't on the same gradient or even the same dimension. This

> What? Ruby and Java aren't even comparable -- not to say one is "better", only to say that they aren't on the same gradient or even the same dimension. This assertion is false. One could, with enough resources, for instance, perform experiments to determine which is better. E.g., you could come up with a million different software development projects, and then set a thousand different development teams on each different project, half of the teams using Java and half using Ruby, and then once the projects had all been completed you could crunch the data on productivity of the development teams and on robustness and efficiency of the products. For all we know, if this experiment were done, it might turn out that one of the languages is better than the other. Now of course, no one is going to have the funds to do this experiment, though perhaps a dent might me made at a much smaller scale. Also, it is likely to turn out that neither is better simpliciter, but rather that each language is better for a certain type of project. If we did this, we are likely to discover that each language is better for the types of problem that each language is already typically used for. Though in the realm of web development, both languages are often used to tackle similar problems. So, we may want to start our grand experiment with, Which language is better for large web development projects?