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?
Agreed. Rails is quick, easy and fun. The only problem is that I keep thinking of projects I want to start with it, and don't have enough time to do them!
On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 13:11:05 -0500 Josh Charles josh.charles@gmail.com wrote:
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: Thoughts?
You might also want to check into mod_perl. While there isn't a name such as "Ruby on Rails" for this, Perl, mod_perl, and module you can download off the CPAN can provide all of this functionality in ways that don't require much "integration".
--------------------------------- Frank Wiles frank@wiles.org http://www.wiles.org ---------------------------------
You might also want to check into mod_perl.
Rails isn't really an apache module like mod_perl. Its an MVC webframework like Java's Struts. Perl has a new implementation that's coming into play called Catalyst (http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2005/06/02/catalyst.html), but I haven't tried it out yet.
Aaron
You might also want to check into mod_perl. While there isn't a name such as "Ruby on Rails" for this, Perl, mod_perl, and module you can download off the CPAN can provide all of this functionality in ways that don't require much "integration".
A module from CPAN? I went over to their site and saw a ton of stuff there. I foresee alot of trouble getting all those things to work together. I installed Ruby, The Rails framework, MySQL, then went on to create a simple list manager in the span of about an hour.
The one thing I'm missing is a really good IDE.
Something I do not yet know about it deployment. For example, will I just be able to copy the code onto the server once I get the database settings set, or will I need to change access to certain folders?
On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 13:36:48 -0500 Josh Charles josh.charles@gmail.com wrote:
You might also want to check into mod_perl. While there isn't a name such as "Ruby on Rails" for this, Perl, mod_perl, and module you can download off the CPAN can provide all of this functionality in ways that don't require much "integration".
A module from CPAN? I went over to their site and saw a ton of stuff there. I foresee alot of trouble getting all those things to work together. I installed Ruby, The Rails framework, MySQL, then went on to create a simple list manager in the span of about an hour.
The one thing I'm missing is a really good IDE.
Something I do not yet know about it deployment. For example, will I just be able to copy the code onto the server once I get the database settings set, or will I need to change access to certain folders?
It's actually multiple modules you can plug-n-play depending on how you want to do things.
For example you can use the MVC framework Catalyst, or create your own easily with Class::DBI and a templating system such as Template::Toolkit, HTML::Template, Mason, etc, etc, etc.
It's not as tightly intergrated as something like Rails, but does give you flexibility in how you do things.
It's actually pretty easy to get the necessary parts to work well together.
--------------------------------- Frank Wiles frank@wiles.org http://www.wiles.org ---------------------------------
On Thu, 2005-07-14 at 13:11 -0500, Josh Charles wrote: 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 used asp.net and php, I would strongly disagree with php needing to catchup to asp.net, the opposite would be more likely.
Whats something asp.net does over php? I have yet to find something I can't do in php.
Whats something asp.net does over php? I have yet to find something I can't do in php.
Not trying to get in to a "my language can beat up your language" discussion (I do like PHP and Ruby), but in my case its not a matter of whether or not I can do it things in PHP, but how simple/easy/quick it is to do so.
Its hard to beat validating records in my models (the M in my MVC app) by: validates_(insert some criteria)_of :attribute_name
or creating one-to-many relationships between models by: has_many :child_models
and belongs_to :parent_models
Notice the sysadmin-like lazyness. Now I finish a complete an app in a few days vs. weeks.
Not to say that someone couldn't write Rails in PHP, but there's a culture difference in Ruby that believes the *best* way to do things should be super easy, and everything else should be just easy.
On Thu, 2005-07-14 at 13:11 -0500, Josh Charles wrote:
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
Funny; we were just chatting about this in the IRC channel. I have a Rails project as well and love it!
Though, a little forewarning: to get Ruby on Rails to the point of outperforming similar Java frameworks, you have to get fast_cgi on Apache2 installed which can be a very confusing process.
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Aaron Spiegel -
Bill Cavalieri -
Frank Wiles -
Jason Clinton -
Josh Charles