I can't speak for JG, but functional programming languages are something very, very different than what most people are used to. They're starting to gain popularity, largely because of how they can help fix shared state problems seen in multithreaded applications. Microsoft's F# is a functional language similar to ML and OCaml, but with the performance profile of C#, and first-class Visual Studio integration. It's not final yet, though.

Functional languages are somewhat discrete math heavy. They draw on a lot of theory. You don't need to take courses to use and understand them, but the learning curve is much higher than imperative languages, such as C/C++, Java, C#.

thank you for perpetuating peoples hate of flash. 2advanced is ugly, complex, and dumb for flash.

Flash has its uses. I'm not denying that there arent ****ty flash sites (2advanced being one of those). If you want to see some cool flash sites, check out [url]www.thefwa.com[/url] or [url]www.dopeawards.com[/url]

I don't care if you like flash or not. I don't care if it "can be done in CSS." They're cool sites and they were done in flash. get over it.

Cool and usable are not the same thing. Unfortunately 99% of all flash sites are not usable by any sort of usability standards.

I'm not going to make an effort to defend flash because I know that all of you hate it

Also, did you even look at any of those sites? 99% seems to be quite a large percentage, especially considering how many companies out there construct flash sites.

Oh and if youre talking about bookmarking, searching, keyboard support. It's all possible in flash. zomg i no rite. You can deep link your site which allows for bookmarking. searching? use your meta data There are other ways to make the content searchable, but im not sure of the top of my head.

No back button? uh. yes. Deep linking can help with that.

Except I guess I can't change anyones opinion on the matter, so if you want to continue to focus on the crap then fine whatever.

It being possible and people actually doing it are two wholly different things. In simple terms, even a poorly written CSS/XHTML page will be more usable than a well-written flash one.

I just don't like adding an additional layer to my development stack for no reason. Just like I don't like using SOAP for web services when in most cases REST will do just fine, I don't like using Flash when HTML/CSS will do the job.

By using a flatter development stack and simpler technologies you tend to end up with much more elegant solutions and more usable products without have to go to extra trouble.

There are a lot of uses for Flash; such as fancy fonts for headings, rotations (although Safari can do this now) and multimedia. But that doesn't justify its use for an entire site.

I would agree that RoR has "too much magic" if you're the type of person that isn't interested in learning things in-depth. However, for the rest of us, the magic just makes things easier because we're actually interested in the intricacies of Ruby & Rails & we're not just downloading gems all day long. Personally, I'm a good deal of time learning Ruby before I bothered venturing in to Rails too far. In theory, you could do this simultaneously or even in reverse.

It's more like the opposite. It's too much magic for someone who DOES want to learn more things in-depth, as Detty described.

That is the perfect example of why I hate flash. Thanks.

I'll just have to take your word on this. I haven't really run in to this issue myself because you should be learning Ruby before or at the same time as Rails. There's no lack of reference material available. For instance I always make sure to have the API open.

I suppose that you guys are simply saying that RoR makes it too easy to NOT LEARN if you don't have the interest. However, like I said, I'm just getting in to Rails after reading a few Ruby books so maybe I'll feel differently in a few weeks or months. We'll see...

You do this in every thread, I wish it could be turned into a youtube video.


Guys, I'm not going to defend flash.. but trust me it's just awesome!

And you make an effort in every thread to show people how much better you are than people.

Except I dont wish it was a youtube video, because it would make me hate the world more.

The major problem I had with Rails, and I know this is a popular complaint, is that while it's very nice for small sites, it becomes ineffectual for large projects. It does not scale well.

I too wish MB was a Massassi youtube star.

There's no real basis for that.

The performance of Rails and the Ruby BCL should be a good enough starting point.