Whenever you are going to build a website or web app, you should consider various issues like hiring a software development company, defining project goals, and preparing software requirement documents. Apart from this, another important question is to choose the right technology stack. Ruby and Java both are popular languages to build web solutions. But which one to choose for enterprise web application development is a big question? So, here comparing Ruby vs Java, we find differences between these coding languages to make the right choice. Here, we will cover the decision -making factors that help you to make the right choice for your app development in 2021. But before digging into the comparison, let us see the overview of Ruby and Java.
Programming language Ruby is an interpreted server-side scripting language. It is much more flexible and dynamic, and allows programming constructs like reflection, dynamic typing or dynamic scoping. There is no need of compilation process and Ruby code is not executed directly by the processor but by a so-called interpreter. This reads the script code and converts it at runtime into processor executable code. So, in order to run Ruby scripts, an appropriate interpreter must be present on the executing machine. Ruby interpreters are available for today’s popular platforms Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Java is a programming language based on C and C++ syntax. It doesn’t have pointers and so programmers cannot accidentally access the wrong memory address. Java is highly valued as an object-oriented, secure, easy-to-learn and computer-language independent programming language. Various sophisticated features like exception handling, concurrency and graphical user interface have been integrated into Java programming language. Java apps run under Windows and MacOS, various Linux and Unix derivatives, and even in web browser- and on different processor substructures x86, ARM or PowerPC.
Ruby-
It is a general purpose programming language having first stable version released 1.0 in December 2005. Latest version of Ruby 6.1 was out in December 2020 and the community is waiting for the to be released TBA version 7. According to history, the Ruby community is strong and has a great scope in the future. One can surely rely on the rails framework or enterprise app development.
Java-
First stable Java version JDK 1.0.2 was released in 1996. Thereafter, successfully Java standards editions 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 was released in 2006, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2018. Later on, stable versions 12, 13, 14 and 15 were released last in September 2020. From the above efficient history of Java, we can understand the vast community, maturity, stability and scalability of Java programming language.
Ruby App Architecture-
MVC-
Ruby follows the convention over configuration COC strictly and implements MVC(model view controller) architecture to ease the maintenance of RoR application. One of the biggest advantage of using MVC architecture is that you can keep the business logic and display of your application separate an so your app doesn’t affect when something goes wrong. This keeps the model(database), view(frontend) and controller(business logic) separate.
Model-
In ruby app, models consist of database information which allow validation and helps them to communicate amongst themselves.
View-
View, frontend of R app includes HTML pages and some other formats like PDF, RSS, XML etc.
Controller-
It interlinks the model with view- logic of application. Controller processes the browser requests and sends the result to the view.
Java programming architecture will help you to understand the execution and implementation of Java code. There are two consecutive processes- compiling and interpretation. Let us see, how java program file runs.
Though Java is compiled, turn-around times are short. This is due to current development environments such as Eclipse that use an incremental compiler. Java programmers have access to tools which override various language specifics.
Among Ruby programmers, it is still widely used to depend on vim or emacs for lack of mature development environments. Also, the main commercial development environments are already appearing and both blend into Eclipse and the Free RIDE written in FXRuby will be further developed.
In J2EE environment, many XML files are typical to edit. Also special archive files (Jar, Ear, War, etc) must be generated. This can be done through plugins integrated into the development environment, or you can use a deploy tool from an app service provider. For small apps, it is sufficient to master Ant. Webstart addresses the subject of updates.
With Ruby, RubyGems develops to the deployment standard. Also, the web framework Ruby or continuous integration server Damage control comes as Gems. There are usual, platform-dependent delivery strategies in both Java and Ruby like Windows installer or Debian packages.
Java programming language is strictly typed and Typing is mostly static. But there are some type errors that are found only at runtime. Java 5 developers have to explicitly designate castings, ie, the assumed runtime type itself. Types in Java are interfaces and classes. In Java 5, compiler was drilled with Autoboxing and generics.
Whereas, Ruby completely depends on dynamic polymorphism. Variable type is not fixed until runtime. Types are always classes. Mixins are Ruby’s solution to Generics and Interfaces. Java enterprise apps are mostly created with J2EE. This framework largely breaks with static typing. Enterprise Java Beans are found as remote objects through a name lookup only at runtime. Then the code includes strings and no classes that makes refactoring more difficult. Also, the development is time-consuming and error-prone.
Java is an advanced programming language and continues taking the leading positions in various ratings. Market of Java experts is crowded with beginners, experienced and super-professional programmers.
Ruby is not among top ten coding languages. But there is a lack of software programmers skilled in Ruby.
Ruby will be the best choice when you want to develop web apps. You can also choose Ruby when –
You can go with Java, when-