I've finally got around to looking into "Ruby on Rails," and I'm extremely impressed. If you're not familiar with this framework, I highly reccomend it. After spending the last several months on a large PHP project, during which I grew extremely sick of that language, Rails is like a breath of fresh air. It has:
Integrated AJAX / DHTML support Automatic Object to Database Mapping Model-View-Control structure Code Generation for Models and Controls Object / Table relationship mapping Automatic generation for different testing / development / production enviroments Optional build in webserver Templating Integrated Unit Testing with customizable tests being generated as Models are created Integrated Load Testing Integrated Code Statistic generator (i.e. discover total number of lines, etc.)
The greatest thing about it is you can start writing code right away that just works. It will automatically generate code for CRUD access to the database that you can change and replace one at a time.
In other words, as soon as there is a database in place, the code generators will handle the data manipulation code until you are ready to customize it.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this framework is that it was built by one guy while working on another project.
I know that it's been mentioned by some on this group that PHP5 is faster than Ruby, but I've been unable to find any data to support this. The way I see it, PHP has alot of catching up to do before it hits the functionality of even ASP.NET (version 2.0).
I've been looking rather strongly at ASP.NET, but it while it has some extremely neat and interesting features, the code generation / testing / MVC / AJAX integration of the Rails framework is much, much better.
I should also say before I get flamed that I'm aware I'm sort of comparing Apples to Oranges when comparing PHP5 to the Rails Framework, but PHP's absences of a really good framework (I'm not talking about PEAR or something like PHPNuke), is beginning to look like a major problem.
Thoughts?