[Tichy]

On the other hand, maybe you wouldn't need 40 developers on the project if you weren't building it in Java...

[0xEA]

Once your code base gets to a certain size, the feature set gets big enough, and the maintenance starts stacking up, you need a more robust language.

Sure, plenty of web apps can run fine on Ruby, but even then, many of them start looking towards a language thats easier to maintain.

[mseebach]

Good developers can move fast in Java, bad developers will move slow and screw up, even in Ruby.

[theshadow]

Obviously, every Java project with hundreds of thousands lines of code can be written by 2 developers in Ruby in a weekend ;)

[AndrewDucker]

Possibly. But I'd like to see that proven.