Ruby looks perfect for learning, and I might point Jonathan that way (except that I bougth a microcontroller card with pretty lights and motor controller I/O, and it only programs in assembler and C).

“…for now, you can risk Ruby on your two-person dormroom startup or your senior project, not for enterprisy stuff where Someone is Going to Get Fired.”

Yikes! I haven’t even started the job yet.

I really appreciate the link to the language wars essay. Ruby sure seems simple, but not that different from the Javascript I’m used to. I don’t know much about Rails yet, or whether it makes sense to consider using it for what I’ll be doing at Mediaplex. I figure my first task will be to get a good understanding of what technologies they’re invested heavily into. Kind of like the serenity prayer, eh? Accept the things I can’t change…

I know they use the latest Oracle backend database and they have some kind of middleware that exports XHTML components that can be assembled in various ways to build the web client UI. I know also that my boss is interested in developing AJAX features in the newest renditions of the software which is one of the things that drew me to the position. What I don’t know is what are the realistic options for gettinng started down that path. Ruby might end up being only an interesting little diversion of no use in the long run. For now it’s a great way to introduce Jeremy to basic programming concepts. He seems to be having fun with it.

However, for serious work, I’m in the smae camp as Joel (no, not you, Max): http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html