From: Ben Bleything <ben@...>
Date: 2006-10-09T03:11:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby vs. Rails

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006, Giles Bowkett wrote:
> >> Does Rails require Ruby?
> >
> >Yes.
> 
> why?

I think the problem is that your question is a little too specific.
Rails (capital R, the Ruby on Rails Framework) does require Ruby...
because that's what it's written in and blah blah blah.

I think your real question, though, was "Is Ruby the only language in
which a framework like Rails can be written?"  I'm inclined to say that
the answer to that question is no.

Obviously, it's never going to be the same if it's not written in Ruby.
Ruby's expressiveness and readability are huge assets to Rails.  But I
feel that a lot of the success of Rails boils down to the simple fact
that it makes it easy to do complex things, and it's "fun" to do so.
That can be built in any language.

> >That's the wrong way around to ask the question isn't it? Something
> >like Rails could easily be implemented in other languages; the author
> >of it chose Ruby for his own reasons, no doubt.
> 
> put it another way, it appears to me, without having done in-depth
> analysis on the numerous frameworks out there, that the best are
> probably Rails and Seaside. Ruby and Smalltalk are similar languages,
> so it's possible that, if Rails and Seaside really are the best, the
> similarities in these languages could be significant and could be part
> of the reason these frameworks succeed. but that leads to a question,
> do the language differences lead to substantially different design
> decisions? because if the similarities in the languages are part of
> the frameworks' success, then evidence should exist within the source
> code, and in particular, the similarities in the languages should
> probably have resulted in similar design decisions which are elegant
> in Ruby and Seaside but less so elsewhere.

There's an extended rant hiding behind this, but I'll keep it simple:
"best" is almost always a relative term.  What's best for you and the
problems you need to solve may be the worst for someone else.  What's
best for a Java programmer is probably a Java framework.

Setting aside all of the arguments we usually hear about Java, I don't
see any reason why a framework couldn't be built that would deliver the
same ease and fun factor of Rails in a Java environment.  Sure, it'd
take more code, and sure, it'd be Java code, but there's nothing magical
about Ruby that enables Rails to do things.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there
are any problems in the web application development world that can't be
solved in any language you choose.

> but the possibility also exists that just saying "this and that are
> the best" is superficial and misses the point, and the real point is
> you choose particular tools for particular problems. for example, I
> worked with a Rails guy recently who didn't want to use Beautiful Soup
> (a Python screenscraper) because Python seemed too different from
> Ruby. I disagreed, but it was his call. we benchmarked Rubyful Soup,
> the Ruby port, but it was ten times slower than the Python version. so
> he found a different Ruby screenscraper that was equivalent in terms
> of performance with Beautiful Soup but less elegant in its use,
> because it allowed him to stay within Ruby.

I should read the entire quote before I respond.  This is basically what
I said above!

> you might choose Django over Rails for a particular class of tasks. if
> you re-implemented Django in Ruby, which parts of it would be
> different upon translation, and would it still be preferable for the
> same class of tasks? if you've ever read works in a foreign language
> you know that certain literary nuances have a very difficult time
> surviving translation.

Though I take your point, I don't think comparing a translation of
programming languages to a translation of human languages is quite the
same thing.  You would lose language-specific idioms, but that wouldn't
be an issue.

A translation (for instance, Django -> Rjango), benefits primarily Ruby
programmers who hear cool things about Django and want to give it a
shot.  In all likelihood they don't know Python, or they'd be using
Django already.  It wouldn't be the same, but it would be good enough.

Ben