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- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -19/+57Since when did rails developers have free time to enter contests? Oh wait, they don't have jobs!
- cactus476, on 10/10/2007, -5/+31And in other news, over 8 teams failed miserably.
- hilomania, on 10/10/2007, -4/+29Pretty Lousy comments on RoR. I myself work almost exclusively with Python / django. However RoR does NOT desrve the bad rap I read in the comments here. For sites that do a lot of input / output RoR is quite a good fast to develop in system and the language although a little quirky, is really not a bad one. As far as performance scalability goes: That's the next big thing people are working on. I consider this less important; If it's a web served app I just put more servers in the rack. servers are cheaper than programmers! Also most people being negative about RoR are mentioning other interpreted languages that are not significantly faster than Ruby.
- lamer0, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Okay, I just have the comment about this story, considering I am a web developer. For most tasks, such as simple CRUD applications you can't go wrong with Rails. CakePHP and Symphony provide pretty much the same thing that Rails provides. So honestly when you look at all three of the technologies they provide the *SAME* thing. However, what makes rails so unique is the fact it showed people how to develop an easy to use framework that can be adopted by the masses.
Now, some cons that really peeve me about rails, it just does not scale up! It scales out but not up. Mongrel instances swell up to 120-150 megs each, so a cluster of 3 or 6 mongrel instances can take 900 megs of ram on a medium sized traffic site (worst case scenario). I know this from personal experience, I a currently in the process of rewriting a rails site in j2ee. Yes! j2ee isn't all that bad considering you avoid JSF, and jsps all together). Just look at http://wicket.apache.org/
What I mean by "scaling up" is that you need to buy a better computer or buy more than one dedicated server to run your medium to high traffic site. This can get expensive for startups on a budget. When you can achieve the same result with say j2ee, on less humble hardware.
Now you might state, "well gee programmers cost more than hardware." Not nessarly when most start-ups are started by the programmers them selves! Just look at youtube or myspace? who invested the time and money? the original developer(s).
Oh another thing that rails does not address well is pagecache, you can't get rails actions to dynamically output page cache based on demand. What I mean is , show front page from cache for non-registered users and generate the page for registered users. Total bummer, considering Ruby isn't the fastest on the rendering block; though cache fragments do help but not as much as if the page was output from pagecache.
Second, ActiveRecord... it kicks ass for its scope, however it falls face flat compared to Hibernate/EJB3. Sorry kiddies I am sure you love your PEAR/ActiveRecord pseudo ORM but can you do an atomic transaction spanning across multiple heterogeneous databases? Nope ... nuff said.
case in point, you need to book a hotel (db1/mysql), book a plane (db2/postgres), and rent a car at destination(db3/oracle). If any of the queries fail in db1,db2 or db3 everything rolls back...
Hiberanate/EJB3(based off hibernate/uses hql) > *
Though the complexity will blow your mind on the initial learning curve. Though not everyone needs all the "features" but it is always good to know you have them.
oh I am such geek ;-( I hope this rant was coherent enough. - darkfate, on 10/10/2007, -35/+46I don't think Rails is a viable platform for anything. It's just a framework for Ruby. If you did the same with PHP and a framework like CodeIgniter or CakePHP or Symfony you would get more practical applications with better results.
I know I'm probably going to get dugg down by all the Rails fanboys, but it's just going to be another fad and in the end, PHP and ASP will live. - lpmusix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12Making a pratical application has nothing to do with the language or framework, it has everything to do with the developers using the framework/language. I don't know about you, but my Rails based applications are way more useful and user friendly than my PHP based ones ever were.
- pnmoore, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Rails = the MVC framework, Ruby = the language, so comparing Rails and PHP is not accurate. Rails to CakePHP maybe, but not Rails to PHP. I get your point, but please be accurate so it seems like you know what you are talking about.
- theforrester, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Really though...shouldn't the app be more about the app and less about the language or the framework. As long as it gets the job done, the end user couldn't care less.
- kvigneau, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9That's funny because two of the teams in the competition had developers on them that I work with. In fact, we're always looking to hire more Rails developers.
http://www.viget.com/careers-opportunities.html - Comatose51, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8I think I'm one of the few people here who've used RoR, Django, PHP, and CakePHP. RoR and Django without a dout in my mind leads the pack. RoR's ActiveRecord implementation is just sick in how good it is. Modified the DB schema? Who cares. The models in RoR will update itself at runtime. The triggers/events in RoR are quite handy. The one thing that I like Django over RoR is the template system. It's a bit more straight forward than RoR but is a little weaker on the Active Record/model side. I believe, however, the lack of runtime introspection for Django models was deliberate because it takes a serious performance hit. Personally, you can't go wrong with RoR or Django. Ruby is such a beautiful language. It's just so easy to write good code in Ruby and Python.
From my experience PHP can get the job done and I've written my biggest project in PHP but I have a hell of a time maintaining my own code later. I'm no PHP expert though. Still I would much prefer PHP over CakePHP since CakePHP adds very little to PHP. It tries to force PHP to do what RoR and Django do but that's not what PHP's strengths are. CakePHP just gets in the way and doesn't offer all the big benefits of RoR or Django. - manitoba98xp, on 10/10/2007, -7/+14Why would you get "more practical applications with better results"? You really need to say something more specific. I'll admit it, I love Rails, but that's not why I'm digging you down. You come across as a PHP fanboy.
- lukes, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9"The only ones really using Rails are, suprise, 37signals."
What part of "over 100 teams" confuses you? - arachn1d, on 10/10/2007, -9/+16I love how you guys are bashing Rails, it's really quite funny. "The only ones really using Rails are, suprise, 37signals.", That is one of the most ignorant things I've ever read on bashing RoR.
You know what? Eat the cake you're baking, because I'm 100% satisfied with working with Ruby on Rails and I'm making a ***** load of money, work with a *****-ton of talented people, and work on *****-megaton-sized-company projects. We have never hit one limitation with Ruby and Rails working together, even in production and "scaling". If you have the money, and if you have the big projects, nothing is an issue (in regards to server space. http://www.engineyard.com for e.g). Rails is fast, Ruby is powerful.
Even on "small" projects it's great because you can get an application running in no-time! Where's the problem here?
I love Ruby, it's just second-nature to go with Rails; which is also just as amazing. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -6/+13whats the prize for the PHP contest? A Job?
- motang, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Checkbook is pretty sweet and sounds useful.
- geniusj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Smells like Flamebait. No developer in his right mind can believe that the language has much of anything to do with the practicality of the applications you create with it.
- geniusj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6I think anyone bashing rails adoption here doesn't live in the Bay Area. If they did, they'd have to have their heads buried in the sand to not see its fairly widespread adoption. I think it's just that, as usual, these things tend to happen in the Bay Area before they do elsewhere.
- Comatose51, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Are you kidding me? I've used both RoR and CakePHP in addition to Python/Django and just pure PHP. PHP in itself will get the job done but the code is difficult to maintain unless you're fairly skilled and disciplined at PHP. CakePHP is trying to force Rails into PHP, which lacking some of the easy access ntrospection that Ruby and Python have, ends up being quite horrible. CakePHP in short is worse than just using PHP. It's attempt at ActiveRecord is just absolutely horrible. Instead of getting back an object with attributes that correspond to the columns in the table you get back an array. In fact, CakePHP is NOT object oriented at all. It's almost completely procedural. One of the advantages of RoR and Django is that they use OO to hide away a lot of the details and allow you to think on a very high level about your web app. CakePHP completely fails at that. You're better off just using PHP. PHP has its strengths and weaknesses. CakePHP plays to those weaknesses.
- carterparks, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7If everyone would take the time to review the incredible caliber of the entries in only 48 hours, I think it would put most of the Rails-hate to rest.
- kingkilr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Hell no you wouldn't, I was a PHP dev up until 2 weeks ago, then I found django, the productivity increase is vaguely scary, I would love to do one of these with Django.
- srslyfkd, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Herr: Idiot.
Rails has support from companies like IBM, Amazon, and other heavyweights. Anyone taking about Rails adoption is a fool if you expect a single framework to a LANGUAGE in its entirety. There us plenty of Ruby AND Rails work available.
I'll never understand the haters. If you dot like Rails simply don't use it. Go on using whatever you do. There is nothing wrong with both coexisting. You're living in a dream world if you think PHP will be the be-all end-all of web programming, however. - ediblepet, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6If anything there's a talent drought of Rails developers here in the Bay Area.
- lukes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5If it's a fad there's little indication of it so far. I was reading comments that Rails was just a "fad" when I was experimenting with an obscure and largely untested new framework for kicks 2 years ago, and now I use it full time as a Rails developer at a University.
PS) Why do you think it's a case of one scripting language/framework to rule them all? Sure you must know enough about programming to understand it's a matter of choosing the right tool for the right job? - Sentinel88, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4If you guys ever worked a real, professional carpenter job full time, ..... I ***** won that deck building contest.
- lpmusix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5maybe you should use rails before you say it's not something for real development. I've written thousands of lines of code in ruby on rails this year on _real_ production websites
- mrmargolis, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5The contest happened over a weekend. All the developers I know have weekends off.
- mrmargolis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Flamebait or ignorance. It's just a framework for Ruby? True but it's a damn good one. Large companies including IBM, Sun, and Amazon all think Rails is worth their attention.
- anamanaman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4It was over a weekend. A more correct statement would be Rails developers dont have lives, or they just love coding to an unhealthy extent.
- ernasty10050, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3http://linga.it/
My favorite one. Click the bookmarklet and it takes you to a wiki for the page you were browsing. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -7/+10You deserve to be dugg down. CakePHP and CodeIgniter are copies of Rails and are PHP frameworks.
- fweeky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3There are other Ruby web frameworks out there, most less opinionated than Rails (and less, er, full of themselves). See Nitro, or Iowa, or Merb, or dozens of others. You can also quickly roll your own, e.g. using Rack or even good old cgi.rb. Ruby has plenty of advantages on its own; it's not all about Rails, even if some kiddies seem to think otherwise (mostly those who keep confusing Rails and Ruby).
- lpmusix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3quite a few of the apps support openid...
- lukes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Hmm. Scratches head. Then many of my Rails sites must be unviable. Thanks for the tip!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -5/+8ROR helps you do more, faster... so that's the reason.
- lamer0, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3your missing the point, it isn't mongrel but just the stack it self, Ruby's generation GC isn't the greatest. Hopefully JRuby/YARV will address this.
Don't get me wrong, I like Rails, I use it where it suits the niche. I just want more bang for my buck in hosting cost/overhead. - cactus476, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Over 100-92 > 8
- lpmusix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3"Now, some cons that really peeve me about rails, it just does not scale up! It scales out but not up. Mongrel instances swell up to 120-150 megs each, so a cluster of 3 or 6 mongrel instances can take 900 megs of ram on a medium sized traffic site (worst case scenario). I know this from personal experience, I a currently in the process of rewriting a rails site in j2ee. Yes! j2ee isn't all that bad considering you avoid JSF, and jsps all together). Just look at http://wicket.apache.org/"
Don't use mongrel then, I've never seen a FastCGI process on my large sites get anywhere near that size. - Psythik, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I'll admit, the SoundBadge idea is pretty frikin' sweet.
- lukes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2"CakePHP and Symphony provide pretty much the same thing that Rails provides. So honestly when you look at all three of the technologies they provide the *SAME* thing"
Wrong. Strange how "pretty much the same thing" in the next sentence becomes "the *SAME* thing".
As for the rest, yes, you are perfectly correct. But you tend to be suffering from the same "one system to rule them all" failure in logic that it seems many others here are. When did development become a case of one technology being the best approach to everything from your 5-page website to a large system "spanning across multiple hetrogeneous databases"? To expect this, as you and what appears to be many others here do, is nonsense and you know it. You, sir, seem by the sound of your post, to be someone who should know better than to vent your spleen by complaining Rails doesn't solve all of life's problems, failing to realise the scope in which it fits absolutely perfectly. - logic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2That would be... let's see... oh, all of us. ;-)
- KevenM, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3crap. you're right. too soon
- flibuste, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Your vocabulary shows that you've never really worked in the real company world, with real results on a real scale. An advice, forget Rails.
- knodi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I started learning RoR about 3 weeks ago and I have to say it is pretty freaking sweet.
- bradleyland, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I own a small web development consultancy where we have decided to use Rails as our exclusive development platform, and I still think you sound like a complete idiot. PHP could not have risen to the heights it has today if it were a "bunch of global functions sloppily thrown together with a fairly miserable syntax." PHP is a fast and powerful language on which thousands of great pieces of software have been written. Your ignorant attitude toward it is embarrassing to read.
- D3koy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3That would be the math....
- anamanaman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Real men use C to build websites, right?
- ediblepet, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I've used both platforms for years professionally. PHP's whole system of core libraries is a bunch of pre-included global functions. Just because it was popular -- and it will not remain popular -- does not mean it was good, it just means it was simple for new users to pick up. It will not last as a serious development platform. I speak only from experience, not ignorance.
- jtarchie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2About your reference to page cache for dynamic users. I will admit that not having it built in sucks, but it is quite easy to add yourself. Its just overall, Ralis is still slow at doing it.
- lamer0, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1yes I will take a look into imagescience, however I don't see how a third party utility can leak ram? when it just resizes and closes operation. I am not saying rails does not scale, it sure does just look at http://yellowpages.com/ or twitter. I want it to scale UP and and out on the cheap. Keyword here is up and cheap.
And yes you can build kick ass applications over the weekend with j2ee/php/python/perl as well. Rails was unique, not so much anymore. The honey moon is long over. People in other camps of development have taken the ideas that were revolutionized by DHH.
I don't think the people at twitter or yellowpages can be classified as "effing idiots." - EnderMB, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Oh come on people! Can't you guys even take a joke?!
***** weak. -
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