Ruby on Rails 1.0 was just released, thus eliminating your last excuse (“It’s not even a stable release!”) for not trying the most buzzword-friendly Web development framework of the year.
For those who have been living under a rock (or, I must admit, for those who have been waiting for SitePoint to write about it), Ruby on Rails is a double-whammy of a programming language (Ruby) and a framework (Rails), which together form a powerful platform for building dynamic Websites quickly.
Ruby on Rails is designed around an agile development methodology, where you start by getting something simple working in a hurry and then build on that core with small changes that gradually produce the finished product. For example, it takes only a few minutes to configure Rails to access your database, from which it can automatically generate a set of pages to view your database records and add/modify/delete records through an administration interface. You can then progressively tweak that auto-generated Web application to get the look and functionality that you want.
Watch for plenty of coverage of Ruby on Rails from SitePoint in the new year. In the meantime, you can peruse SitePoint’s Ruby forum.
One hopes that the overwhelming response to this release, not the Ruby on Rails platform itself, is what’s responsible for its Website having slowed to a crawl…
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I’d be interested to hear more on the subject, even I myself prefer PHP.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:14 am
The site is being slashdotted, for the 11th time I believe. Even Rails slows down for one of those.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:18 am
Kevin, I don’t mean to be rude … but tell me why I should care.
PHP is a great scripting language that is tightly integrated with MySQL. If you want to get a dynamic page up quickly, its the way to go. ASP.NET is a great framework that helps cut out a lot of “busy work” in web development.
What the h*@* is Ruby on Rails?!?!?
Forgive me if I sound a tad dramatic, but I keep hearing it everywhere and no one seems to be able to explain what makes it great.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:21 am
I suggest you simply go here to watch some videos http://www.rubyonrails.org/screencasts and over here to read up on real people’s experiences http://www.garrettdimon.com/archives/why-i-love-ruby-on-rails
geof
December 14th, 2005 at 2:39 am
Again … I apologize if I sound rude (but I like to get to the point).
Show me some code, show me how it can cut down my development time by 10 (as the website claims).
With ASP.NET, I initially didn’t see what the hype is about, but as soon as I saw code and examples, like the validator controls, the calendar control, the datasources and databinding … I was won over.
Show me something on Ruby that will blow my mind … please.
I just get this creepy feeling that this is almost like the movie “Wag the dog” where we’re just supposed to believe what we hear or read because someone important said so.
December 14th, 2005 at 2:52 am
Btw … I saw the video and that was pretty annoying.
There seemed to be a lot of smoke (the swirly kind) and mirrors stuff going on.
With the video skipping over important things to show you how you can create a blog in 15 minutes. Oh well, I guess I’ll wait on those links barring that I’ll wait to see how the masses take to it, but my guess is this is just another flavor of the month.
December 14th, 2005 at 3:08 am
How about http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/11/16/ruby-the-rival.html?page=1 or http://dema.ruby.com.br/articles/2005/07/05/do-yourself-a-favor-get-a-good-framework or http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8274 for starters.
December 14th, 2005 at 3:24 am
Try this:
http://rewrite.rickbradley.com/pages/moving_to_rails/
December 14th, 2005 at 5:19 am
ikeo if you want to see code, I think taking half an hour or so to work through this tutorial for building an online recipe catalogue would do the trick. It illustrates where Rails saves developer time in certain areas, plus gives you a taste for why all the hype.
December 14th, 2005 at 8:26 am
Well, as lame an excuse as that was for me, I do believe you are right
December 14th, 2005 at 9:20 am
“add/modify/delete records through an administration interface” -
Is the admin interface like what I understand J2EE’s to be – an admin interface where permissions are defined for groups/roles?
If so, This might be just the thing I was waiting for, and trying to make PHP fit into.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:59 am
God. Here we go again… Can we not have some piece and quite around here huh? ;) :lol:
Stable, or otherwise, I still think it’s suspect… Nothing can be that good; something has to give sooner or later in my view.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:16 am
@WebDevGuy:
There is no “admin interface” for Rails. You have to code it yourself OR use Rails’ generate scaffold. Generate scaffold creates a simple admin interface (without authentication), but the interface is meant as a start. You enter some test data and tweak the code. This saves you a lot of time.
Just give it a try! – installation is easy, you could have something simple in one hour if you start now :).
December 14th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
I’m impressed. RoR seems to eliminate all the crap I hate about php, namely its cumbersome interaction with mySQL
December 14th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Just like Rapid Admin by SitePoint, I presume?
December 14th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
[...] Via: Sitepoint.com [...]
December 14th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
How is this any different from using a template-based code generation software like CodeSmith with ASP.NET?
December 14th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
[...] Ruby on Rails got its reputation based on how little code you have to write to get common Web development tasks done. But what about the code that you do have to write? Since yesterday’s post announcing Ruby on Rails 1.0, a lot of people have chimed in asking what it’s like when you get past the hype. [...]
December 15th, 2005 at 12:48 am
I think a lot of the smoke (and especially the mirrors) that you see in rails is due to reflection. It’s a technique where one part of a program can discover the properties and methods of another, previously unknown part at run time. It’s quite common in Java and very do-able (but much rarer) in PHP.
I haven’t tried either Ruby or Rails, but the language looks very readable (but so is PHP) and the framework seems inspired. I am hesitent to jump on the bandwagon though, for two reasons.
First, I had trouble finding some Ruby libraries (gems) that I would need. The standard function library in PHP is much more complete and already includes what I need. Second, I am a little skeptical about how well the object relational mapping will work with a fairly complex data model.
But I will certainly give it a closer look when I have more time.
December 15th, 2005 at 1:35 am
Correct me if i’m wrong but doesn’t Cold Fusion do much the same thing? CF is a tag based “language” that allows you to develop dynamic web applications very quickly with over 200 powerful tags allowing file uploads, emailing, charting, creating pdf’s, security features etc etc just to name a few… AND you do not have to learn a programming language. Why re-invent the wheel again with Ruby?
December 15th, 2005 at 1:44 am
When are going to expect a ruby on rails tutorial from sitepoint? Cause I’m pretty sure I’m on the edge of my seat.
-Arik
December 15th, 2005 at 1:47 am
I think the concept of Ruby on Rails is partially a good one, but I’m very turned off by the ideology of the RoR developers and how they scoff at and discount real-world considerations. For example, they look down on the use of any logic in the database (i.e. stored procs, triggers, etc.) or schema with existing and unchangable naming conventions. It’s clear they don’t understand that most real-world apps can’t be constrained to only be used by and to conform to RoR. If the system is more than a trival app, or the database tables were developed away from the influence of RoR, that will never be the case.
Further, I’m turned off by the fact they implemented it on Ruby, an otherwise obscure language instead of implementing it on PHP or ASP/ASP.NET or JSP or other langauge/platform with a significant userbase. What they have done is once again fragment the developer base making integration and interoperability with existing systems that much harder and requiring developers to learn that much more.
The rapid development concept at RoR’s core is fundamentally sound and I’d be all for it if they had only 1.) allowed complexity to scale by making naming conventions optional and 2.) used a language/platform with a much larger userbase.
As it is, I think developers using RoR will be doing businesses a disservice when using it for any apps with an expectation of even a reasonably long life. That is unless the developers of RoR shed their ideology, but I don’t think that’s likely after hearing them preach about it. Plus it’s just going to require developers to learn yet another web development language and figure out how to integrate with existing apps.
Of course SitePoint makes money on the latter, so I don’t expect you’ll be too keen to beat on RoR for the latter reason. :)
December 15th, 2005 at 1:47 am
I agree with what MikeSchinkel says about the database and real world considerations.
For me, the most valuable part of an application is the data that it collects. For that reason, I spend most of my time designing databases. Applications can always be replaced. The data is the reason for the application’s existence.
After my experiences with things like Hibernate, I still prefer to hand code my serialization routines. For all but the most trivial apps, I’m not ready to give up any control of the data.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:03 am
It’s quite obvious that people who have issue with RoR regarding complexity, non RoR datastore etc have no clue, and have not investigated the framework and language.
I program in Java/.NET/ASP/PHP and a whole crapload of others.
I tinker in RoR.
RoR has more out of the box power than any of them. It is a better solution for web development. No question (other than unicode blah blah).
It enforces “the right way”. Just by using it you will become a better web developer regardless of the technologies you use.
Any framework/language can be used badly.
RoR is the hardest framework to use badly.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:09 am
Here comes the calvary! :]
I’m glad the nay sayers have shown up to back me up.
Since yesterday night I’ve combed the web high and low to find tutorials and find out user opinions. (I blew 4 hours of research between the hours of 2am of 6am last morning). I watched videos and read through close to a hundred posts and what I found is this ….
1. Ruby on Rails seems to have a group of developers who come across as a little elitist … as if “If your not using Ruby … something is wrong with you”. The pro-ROR crowd don’t seem to be show-me folks, they bristle at questioning about the merits of Ruby instead of showing you specialized examples. When I was picking up CSS, if I had questions, there would be people on the Sitepoint forums (bless their hearts) that would build out complete pages to demo for me. No such thing with Ruby.
Example:
The masses – “Is Ruby scalable?”
ROR geniuses – “You’re asking the wrong question dude”
The masses – “But I want to know if it will scale”
ROR geniuses – “Thats not important to know, since we don’t know the answers. The important thing is that its hot! and you need to install it on your computer and make out with it if possible”
The masses – “Hmmm ….”
2. I’m still looking but I haven’t seen any decent Ruby On Rails tutorials. They all seem to tell you how to build the same thing (a blog). I’d like to see a better introduction to Ruby (where are the control structures? how does it interface with databases?) I also want to see a better explanation of these MVC elements, what are they? What are their methods? properties?
Overall I think the pro ROR crowd need to do a better PR job …
PHP sold itself, ASP.NET sold itself (with the help of millions of dollars)
Ruby …. the jury is still out, but its looking like this will go down as another one of those obscure software efforts that the pimply faced kid at your community college programming class tosses around to make you think he’s a badass.
By the way for a more insightful and (quite frankly) thought provoking words on this “Ruby” thing see MikeSchinkel’s post above.
So please ROR elite … start from the top … give us some code to chew on.
(I’m talking if loops, variables and arrays)
December 15th, 2005 at 2:23 am
Case in point.
Translation:
“I’ve used it, its hot. If you don’t see why, then you can’t sit at the back of the class with the cool kids (us)”
December 15th, 2005 at 2:28 am
Anonymous,
I investigated the language long enough to know that there were no library functions or gems for some stuff that PHP can do out of the box. And I’ve yet to meet an object relational mapping framework that requires less effort to use than no frameork at all for complex data structures.
And, are you suggesting that we need to have the “right way” enforced because we need to become better web developers? Believe it or not, I do try not to use my tools badly.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:35 am
You know ikeo, The feeling that you’re describing is exactly the same feeling I had when I first used Hibernate. Nobody could give me any answers, they just kept telling me how great it was.
When I finally questioned one of the developers, I was told that what I wanted to do would require a lot of work. Well, all I wanted to do was serialize one of the most common structures known to database modelers.
You can read our conversation here:
In the end, I could have saved weeks if I had just sat down and wrote the code instead of looking for the easy way out.
December 15th, 2005 at 3:22 am
I don’t mind trying another framework, but I’m definitely not changing the programming language, I’m quite happy with PHP! What does Ruby do that PHP doesn’t? Has anyone tried PHP on TRAX?
December 15th, 2005 at 3:47 am
I’m just glad to have someone back me up on this.
What I think we need to concentrate on though is MikeSchinkel’s post above.
What if this had been implemented in PHP? (even more interesting, why wasn’t it implemented in PHP?)
Why go re-invent the wheel (so-to-speak) when we are constantly being told as up-and-coming developers that it isn’t the smart thing to do.
Right now what I’m thinking is that programmer’s hubris got in the way.
“Lets do this from scratch, my way … so people can see how smart I am”
Either ways, this is a moot point. If the masses go for ROR, I’ll become an ROR groupie tomorrow, but for now I am slightly irritated with all the ROR cheerleading going on here. It smells very funny to me.
December 15th, 2005 at 3:49 am
I can’t say I agree 100% ikeo. I do agree that using PHP would make more sense for all of the reasons that MikeSchinkel pointed out. However, I’m more skeptical of the object relational mapping. I can’t say for sure that Rails expects a table per class mapping, but it sure smells like it does. That would be a deal-breaker for me.
And thanks for pointing out PHP on TRAX flow. I hadn’t heard of it before. I will look at it more, but the object relational stuff still worries me.
I hope I’m wrong. Can anyone tell me for sure if these frameworks require a table per class mapping?
December 15th, 2005 at 4:06 am
I wasn’t insulting your product. But your post was clearly a plug for a commercial product.
BTW, are you suggesting that RoR is an overnight hack? I’m reading the source docs right now and it looks pretty rich to me.
December 15th, 2005 at 5:07 am
By no means is RoR a hack, it is very well done. I reviewed their product when it was in beta (which was quite stable then as well). Pardon the plug.
December 15th, 2005 at 5:13 am
Do I have to trow away my sitepoint php-books?
December 15th, 2005 at 8:24 am
sigh. Kevin didn’t attack php, there was no statement on which was better. If you want to try a new language, go for it, if not, that is fine too. I don’t see why people are freaking out so much. I for one like trying different languages when i get time and find posts like these helpful to whats going on the in community.
in other words…chill.
December 15th, 2005 at 9:42 am
This is a silly argument. If people want to experiment with Ruby and Rails and discover that it works for them, fine. Nobody put a gun to their heads, and nobody’s forcing you to use it, either. Every popular technology in widespread use today was once a fringe technology, championed by a small group of devotees. If people prefer Ruby and Rails, they will grow in the market; if not, they will wither. If we carried Mike’s argument to extremes, we’d still be writing everything in Fortran.
December 15th, 2005 at 10:28 am
ikeo, they shrug off “is it scalable” questions because they’ve answered it dozens of times, I’d imagine.
37signals (http://www.37signals.com/) created Rails for their web apps. Those apps have over 100,000 users. Does that count as scalable?
Why not take 15 minutes to download it and an hour to test it out for yourself instead of the four hours of research you say you did? No better way to see how something works than to try it.
December 15th, 2005 at 10:38 am
Oh, and for anyone looking for a nice fairly mature PHP version of Rails, see Symfony (particularly their advent tutorial, http://www.symfony-project.com/askeet/).
December 15th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Mike, ROR allows you to override any convention, and that fact actually segues into one of the main reasons Rails was created using Ruby: you can open any class and rewrite its default methods.
ROR is compatible with any legacy db schema, and telling Rails to use table “client13x” instead of the default “clients” is as easy as “set_table_name ‘client13x’”. Rails also supports object serialization (in YAML format), and complex queries using “Object.find_by_sql()”.
The key is giving you the power when you need it, but radically simplifying the other 90% of database calls that you do. If you’re really serious about educating yourself about Ruby and Rails, I’d suggest it’s worth the $25 to get the Rails book from the Pragmatic Programmers.
December 15th, 2005 at 11:04 am
Serializing with activerecord is as easy as:
In your model.
You can do reflection in java, but it is read-only. You can’t put:
in your model (say post) and get methods like. This is why it has been done in Ruby and not in java/php.
It looks for a column post_id in the comments table by default. But if you want to use another column:
Rails uses defaults and you save time by using these but if you want to use your own things, you can.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Hi Fenrir2,
I’m pretty sure you could do something like that in java, maybe with beanshell? And PHP on TRAX does this too, although I will admit that the Ruby syntax is much prettier.
I noticed that the find method seems to assume that you have a single integer column for a key. What about composite keys? Also, how hard is it to create a mapping for subclasses?
Can you show me what the mapping would look like for something like this:
December 15th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
When I look at that structure, I see Party as a (abstract) base class or maybe a (marker) interface. Person and Organization would be concrete subclasses of Party. RelationshipType is a composite of two RoleTypes. And Relationship is a composite of two Parties and a RelationshipType. That’s how I’d like to create the class model to represent that data.
So I’m wondering how much of that is considered an exception to the rules of Rails. And I guessing that the answer is “most of it.” So then I’m wondering, how high are the hoops that I have to jump through to make it work and is it worth it?
I read the tutorials and examples, and I read some of the source docs. It all seems so beautiful when you’re doing something simple. What I really want to see is a real world example.
I think RoR is a great idea. I think object relational frameworks in general are a great idea. I just don’t want to invest a lot of time learning all of the finer points of a framework just to find out if it’s right (again).
December 15th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
I’ve been playing with Rails for a few weeks in my spare time. I’ve worked my way through about a quarter of the Pragmatic book on Rails, and about the same portion of Programming Ruby. I mostly work in Java, though I’ve used PHP for a number of tasks. Neither is even close to as productive for building the simple apps I’ve tried in Rails.
But I haven’t really tried anythng larger or more complex. I haven’t tried to run this against an existing database schema, espcecially against one that doesn’t match Rails’ simple and clear naming convention. I haven’t tried to match the complex flow of any existing application. And I really wonder if some of the elegance of Rails disappears when I start to need those things.
Rails does have a number of amazing features. And it is very easy to get going in.
People who complain that it’s written in Ruby are missing the point. You couldn’t easily do some of this in PHP or even in Java. (And I know there are clones in these languages. I’ve played with Trails, heard about Trax, and looked briefly at Django. Only Dhango seems to come close.) Ruby’s elegance and power make it easier to write code that works just as you intended. And it’s not as though Ruby is really a new kid on the block. I think Ruby, Java, and PHP are around the same age.
I’m not sold on Rails, but I am about to start a small project of my own, one with no real deadline and no consequences for failure, one that doesn’t have to mesh with any legacy code, databases, or design. I will try to develop it in Rails, because I think it will take no more than half the time it would take me in either PHP or Java.
For now, in the day job, I’ll continue with Java. For other existing projects, I won’t switch from PHP. But if this works the way it looks like it will, I may start talking to clients about the possibilities with Rails.
December 15th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Agile web framework for Python:
TurboGears
After doing to research, I’ve decided to go with Python and TurboGears instead of Rails. Python has a solid community, and Ruby just isn’t there yet.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
ikeo:
It’s very much NOT “if you dont see why then you cant sit with us”.
I could throw all sorts of “case in point” poor analogies involving where you sat in class and how “cool” it is.
But lets talk about learning.
If you cant be stuffed investigating for yourself, or looking under the hood of a technology that thousands of people think is great, then you are detrimental to the evolution of the web. You aren’t interested in investigation on your own merrit. You would prefer to spend an hour arguing on a board, than an hour getting comfortable with how it works as a whole, or opening up the inner classes and seeing exactly what each bit does..
Recently there was some discussion about the new wave of web amateurs. People who stick their head in the sand and refuse to learn the trends, or even “possible” trends which is very much what RoR is; People who dont believe in R&D; People who believe we already have the “best” tools and methodologies at our disposal; People who argue for the sake of argueing. The attitude displayed so far is not so different.
Get that blog tutorial, morph it into something else. The tutorial is not “whats possible”. The tutorial is “this is how u get started building anything”. These are the ideologies.
I don’t have all the answers for you, but I know if you can be bothered you can find them. Most are all sitting on rubyonrails.org.
From reading that site, the api etc I feel i have enough knowledge to build pretty much any “real world” web application with Rails. I dont have all the answers off the top of my head, but i can get them from reading the site.
(I’m a bit sick at the moment… so pain killers and grumpyness are probably effecting the wording and accuracies of this post… sorry)
December 15th, 2005 at 9:08 pm
It’s easy to say “take the time to learn it,” but that’s not always so easy to do. I devoted the entire day yesterday to reading up on RoR. In fact, I spent all day all night reading about RoR. Now, I’m pretty sure that RoR will do what I need. But what I’m unsure of is, will it be easier in the long run and save me time given that I have a fairly complicated data structure and so little time.
So I’m faced with a choice. I can spend another day or two writing a proof of concept and hope that it really proves the concept, or I can just get back to work.
On Monday, when I meet with my client, I will have to show some stuff that I’ve come up with. If I spend Thursday and possibly Friday learning RoR, I will have that much less to show. I’d much rather walk into the meeting with a laptop full of pretty screens than with a rave about a new technology.
That is, unless someone who really knows can not only tell me with conviction that it will be worth it, but show me. That’s why I wanted to see the mappings for those tables.
I think ikarys is right. (I’m sorry you’re not feeling well ikarys.) I probably need to go join the forums over there.
I don’t like being skeptical. I really do hope RoR is all that. I just don’t have time to learn every technology just because someone calls it sweet, or because thousands of people think its great (think visual basic). I’d never get anything done.
December 15th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
sorry ikarys … I’m from a very pro-handholding gene pool myself. I like mucking around with new technology as much as the next guy, but this “web amateur” can’t afford the time to sit still and do that. I’d like to have an easier easing into ROR so I can start playing with it, I don’t want to have to figure too much out initially.
My main problem is really just the trumpeting of ROR that is going on. I don’t know why, but its just a bit unsettling (it reminds me of American Party politics to a certain extent). I’m not trying to cause problems, but I just think that the plaudits for ROR should be a bit more restrained and objective instead of the current cheerleading that we have now.
Get well soon my man :)
December 15th, 2005 at 11:26 pm
A long time ago, at a telephone company far, far away, we used Clipper for a DOS based order entry system. (for you youngsters, clipper was the “dirty little secret” of programming shops that needed to create database backed DOS apps fast.) We hated Cliper. A day didn’t go by that We didn’t curse Clipper.
Then one day, Microsoft introduced VisualBasic 1. What a wonderful day that was! It got great press. Everyone seemed to love it. And it created Windows apps without C! We rejoiced. We made pretty screens, we popped up dialogs… we were happy.
We were happy until we tried to meet our requirements. As our code piled up behind buttons, we struggled with basic functionality like communications and printing. How we longed for the days of Clipper.
The moral of the story is… I’m not sure :(
December 16th, 2005 at 12:31 am
BTW, I was the Anonymous poster that ikeo quoted. I dunno why it made me anonymous :(
:) that time to sit still and learn, is the time you spent discussing in this thread.
It’s that easy!
December 16th, 2005 at 1:54 am
I’ve played around with RoR and I’m still not sold. I’d much rather go with Python and use TurboGears just because Python seems to be a MUCH more mature language in general.
RoR IMO is a cool framework – but people pump it up a little too much. It’s not an “EASY” Language to learn… you STILL have to learn ANOTHER LANGUAGE that will take you 10 times the time to learn it than it would take you to build 2-3 New Projects using your existing Languages, so what’s the point? I’ve been hearing “Rapid Development” on every Blog online but it just doesn’t make sense to me to learn, yet ANOTHER language to get things done a little faster??? I’ve even heard “ROR Brought us AJAX” somewhere… funny, I thought JavaScript brought us AJAX (other than Jesse James Garrett ;) ). PRADO was using “AJAX” before it was coined “AJAX” but, since it was “just another framework” it’s still “just another framework”.
The thing I do like about RoR is the fact that they brought Video’s rather than boring old Text Documents… But, I’ll stick to PHP and wait for the Zend Framework to hit the Community =) I just see RoR like Audi’s in America… yeah, they’re cool, they’re fast, goood looking, etc — but why do I need it? What’s the down-side to it? There’s definately better choices out there, right?
Hopefully, as I’ve mentioned other places, Zend will do the same as RoR did with the Video’s, but with more examples than RoR.
December 16th, 2005 at 2:23 am
No that’s silly. I am learning it right now. You know very well that I’m subscribed to this thread and my email icon blinks whenever someone posts. I can’t have spent more than 45 minutes total here and that was trying to get answers that don’t seem to be forthcoming. So I think it’s unkind suggest that I’m sitting around doing nothing but staring at this thread when I should be studying.
December 16th, 2005 at 2:25 am
Problem with Ruby (the platform) is speed.
When talking about multi-tier web applications we also need pure processing power. The current sollution in Ruby is to drop to C code … and that, from a productivity perspective, sucks.
Also, because Ruby cannot even have an XML parser written in pure Ruby that doesn’t suck, many libraries come with components written in C, making deployment a nightmare.
When it comes to Rails … my main problem with it is the poor internationalization support, although overall is a good framework.
Another problem would be the AJAX support that looks childish.
IMHO, component and event-based web development (ASP.NET, JSF, Tapestry) is the way to go.
December 17th, 2005 at 1:49 am
Oh, I forgot, there is another problem with Ruby on Rails.
The Rails community became too arrogant in relatively little time.
It doesn’t help promoting Rails simply because Ruby is still considered a toy.
December 17th, 2005 at 1:53 am
I am intrigued by the hype of Rails and I enjoyed watching the blog-in-15-minutes overview. I think that is what it should be looked at too – an overview. There is more behind Rails (such as the power of Ruby) that leaves lots to be learned by us all.
I am an ASP.Net 1.1 developer and I just now got a chance to look at ASP.Net 2.0 and was surprised at how much time they spent reducing the time for the developer to do common tasks. In rails, it is a few lines of code to get the ‘insert’, ‘edit’, ‘delete’ functionality … in ASP.Net 2.0 it is a few mouse clicks. The new IDE is (free) way better than Visual Studio 2003 – which I never used because it sucked and stuck with Dreamweaver.
Anyhow, Rails is wicked-awesome from my brief look into it. I’ll definately get a project or two going on it and add it to my toolbelt of languages to use for projects. Many of already said it in these comments but Rails, PHP, CF, ASP.Net , Java etc. all have their place and the choice is up to you as the developer to decide what is right for the tasks at hand.
Good luck to everyone.
December 18th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
People, I think you are wasting your time discussing this. If RoR seems the way it appears to you, fine. Feel free to use something else. Python, Java, ASP.NET, PHP, whatever. These are tools. You should be thankful you have options. I myself have used PHP primarily for over seven years, ASP at some point (before PHP), some Python and now Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
Some fit certain projects and others fit other projects. I like the Rails philosophy to a certain degree and think we could all benefit from it. Again, these are tools. If you don’t see them as tools and if you don’t see the advantage of having options and accepting that some are better for certain things, then IMO you need to stop breathing code and go get some air.
Not to be rude but I’ve heard this discussion many times already (with and without RoR).
Have a nice day.
February 5th, 2006 at 4:04 am
how can i access the c language code in ru by on rails
May 29th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
not sure what to use
January 10th, 2008 at 8:07 pm