The distance from idea to execution
So I have this idea for a neat app for my family and friends to use. I thought, great! Awsome oppourtunity to use RoR. Then I thought, hold up, even better idea: compare the same app done in Java (J2ee web app) and in RoR. And of course, since I’m trying to use Linux as my everyday computing OS, do it all in Linux.
I decided to start with Java since that’s what I know the best, and from what I already know about RoR, I know i can start just by typing:
rails <project_name>
With Java, well… wait a second, why can’t I just do the same? Let’s see to do what I have in mind, i need to:
- Set up a project in Eclipse
- Set up an Ant build.xml
- Set up a project directory structure
- Download the dependencies I need
- Hibernate
- Xdoclet
- log4j
- commons-logging
- commons-collections
etc, etc, etc.
A lot of this stuff is very repetitive. Maybe what I should do first is create a project that lets me get started quickly. In fact, AppFuse from Matt Raible is intended to do this. However, it’s too much for me. It is designed towards new developers to J2EE, and it makes some good assumptions towards architecture, frameworks, etc. However for me personally, it’s too much. Often times most of my projects start the same way, which makes me think that what I really should do in order to shorten the distance between idea to execution, is to make the starting step be the shortest possible. Which is one of RoR’s biggest strenghts so far.
By the way, i still haven’t started on anything 
Maybe the issue is procastination…
