On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Ryan Lane <rlane32(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How many languages can we reasonably support?
We're currently using
PHP, Python, Java, OCaml and Javascript (and probably more). Should we
also throw Ruby in here as well? What level of support are the
Selenium tests really going to get if they require developers to use
Ruby?
I was initially pretty skeptical on the Ruby choice, and I'm not going
to say that I'm sold yet. However, the part of Chris's proposal
that's most persuasive to me is the fact that Ruby/Selenium seems to
be the most built out, with the largest community. In particular,
RSpec seems to be a rather important piece of all of this.
I decided to see if there was a Python equivalent of RSpec, and as
often is the case these days, the exact question was asked on Stack
Overflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7079855/are-there-technical-reasons-a-ru…
In short, Ruby lends itself to that kind of thing a lot more.
In reading the Stack Overflow thing, I was reminded of a talk I saw a
couple of years ago titled "Python vs. Ruby: A Battle to The Death"
http://blog.extracheese.org/2010/02/python-vs-ruby-a-battle-to-the-death.ht…
...which, as it turns out, specifically talks about RSpec.
Anyway, the point that I'm making here is that it's quite possible
that Ruby really is the right tool for the job. Since I'm much more
comfortable with Python than Ruby, I'd be much more comfortable if we
stuck with Python. Sticking with Python may mean a lot of wheel
reinvention to accommodate language orthodoxy which really kinda
sucks.
I'd like us to test the assertion that the Ruby/Selenium combination
is much more mature than the Python/Selenium combination, but if
that's true, then I think we may want to suppress the anti-Ruby bias
and figure out how we can work with Ruby/Selenium.
Rob