Ruby for prototyping

[Mihai Lihatchi]

Hello Ruby programmers
I started learning Ruby in May while waiting for my SCEA assignment during a brief holiday . I used .. and still use the "PickAxe" book - "Programming Ruby". I already am able to write basic Ruby scripts and unit tests for the scripts ( can't live without unit-tests).
Because I have managed to get the SCEA certification I am now looking to improve my prototyping skills.

What I need is to prototype a web application in Ruby ( maybe using Rails) and then get to implement it using GWT , Java POJO's and JPA's .
Has anybody used this approach ? Did it work ?
PS : I read about this prototyping in one language and implementing in another in a Martin Fowler book .. can't remember which now so I think it works well for some people.

[David Newton]

I used to do that, then I stopped because once I had a working prototype I really didn't need to implement it using a different technology, especially since JRuby on Rails works so well.

But yes, with caveats:

- If you *must* use a specific deployment technology, and:
- The system is large enough, and:
- It requires large amounts of behavioral validation, and:
- You must provide that validation all at once instead of as the system is developed.

Plus you can usually reuse parts or all of the database as long as you design it appropriately.

More often than not the prototyping I do isn't the complete system, but rather small functional aspects: maybe some business logic, an object model, and so on. Depending on the target and prototyping system, sometimes I can use the prototype code directly, and if I run in to performance issues, convert it to the target system. But I'm almost exclusively on the JVM, so that's really easy.