I think convention over configuration is one positive idea that Ruby had brought to the java world. One of the criticisms that is lobbed at java is that it has too many XML configuration files. I don’t think this is a weakness in the java language as much as it is the desire to make an extremely flexible system that doesn’t require a re-compile to change optional parameters. It centralizes these choices into a configuration file instead of throughout several source code files.
This configuration file explosion isn’t exclusive to java. I’ve seen it in rails applications too. The only difference that I can tell is that Rails uses a more terse file format known as YML. The production Rails app that I am working with has dozens of these configuration files. Frankly, it looks no different to me than other production java projects I’ve been on.
YML may be easier for a developer due to the terseness of it, but I don’t think it is any better for the folks who are expected to maintain these configuration files (the production support teams). In fact, I would think XML would have an advantage in this area because of the ability to validate an xml document based on a schema. I am not aware of these sorts of tools for YML.
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