From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-09-10T08:42:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Joel Spolsky on languages for web programmingr

On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 08:28:56AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > If you're going to debate the scale of productivity increase for web
> > development gained with Rails, perhaps you should also debate these
> > mythic software performance gains for .NET over Rails.
> 
> I haven't seen any benchmarks one way or the other. So I can't comment
> with any assurance. Nobody is paying me to improve the performance of
> either .NET or Ruby, but since Ruby is an open-source project, it's only
> natural that I'd choose to volunteer in that direction. :) But I'm a lot
> more interested in hard numerical apps than web apps at the moment.

Joel indicated that you could get the same scalability/performance out
of one fifth the boxen by using .NET instead of Rails.  That's where
this tangent of the discussion originated.


> 
> > I, frankly, am
> > not convinced .NET grants any notable performance benefit over Rails on
> > average, at all.
> Neither am I, as I noted above. But Joel Spolsky is, so I think it's at
> least worth investigating how he came to his conclusions and tearing
> said arguments apart. I think what he is saying is that *today's* Ruby
> interpreters are slower that *today's* .NET run-times, and not anything
> about Rails vs. NET for web apps. Yes, the line about buying five
> machines vs. one is a cheap shot.
> 
> Speaking of which, does anyone know what the underlying platform is for
> MySpace? Windows? .NET? LAMP? Something else?

Until recently, MySpace was running on ColdFusion 5.  It is, last time I
checked, undergoing migration to BlueDragon.NET (CFML on .NET).


> > I'm more convinced of productivity gains for Rails
> > programmers over .NET programmers, however.
> 
> With equal levels of experience? Equal levels of application domain
> knowledge? The same processes? All factors equal except .NET vs. Rails?
> That's a competition I'd like to see, if there's some way to set it up.
> It's very rare, however, that all other factors *are* equal.
> 
> Most of the claims of improved productivity for Rails -- the ones I
> believe, anyhow -- are made by people with many years of experience in
> web development under their belt and much of that experience with a
> mature Java framework. In short, all they have to learn is where to find
> everything in Rails and the details of the Rails domain-specific
> language. They already know how to build a shopping cart and just need
> to learn how to do it in Rails.

That sounds like less-than-equal levels of experience with Rails.  Let's
just unceremoniously dump equal numbers of long-time web developers into
Rails and ASP.NET environments, but without prior experience with
either, and see what happens.  That's probably more fair than
experienced ASP.NET developers vs. experienced Rails developers, since
from what I've seen most of the .NET developers who know their fourth
points of contact from holes in the ground are desktop application
guys, not web developers.  I wouldn't want to give the Rails guys an
unfair advantage.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to
build programs out of the wrong concepts." - Paul Graham