From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2007-10-03T05:05:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby vs. PHP

I'm jumping in late here, and I've only skimmed most of the replies,
so pardon me if I'm repeating anything already said:

On 10/1/07, Marcin Raczkowski <mailing.mr@gmail.com> wrote:
> Richard Conroy wrote:
> > On 10/1/07, Marcin Raczkowski <mailing.mr@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hello
> >>
> >> My company is trying to get big contract for creating and maintaining
> >> HUGE website (nation wide portal). We're trying to convince investor
> >> that Ruby (i don't mean rails) with custom tailored MVC framework is
> >> best solution, we're going to make prototypes in rails FAST, then port
> >> heaviest and most frequently used parts to my custom framework, rewrite
> >> AR into tuned SQL queries etc.
> >
> > Why is this a good idea?
>
> why not?
> rails is easy to prototype but is painfully slow and hard to optimize, i
>   know caching is going to play huge role but optimized complex sql
> queries are also important

On the other hand, there are lots of folks working on optimizing
Rails, how many are working on optimizing your custom tailored
framework.

If you don't want to use Rails, then why not look at something which
already has somewhat of a community like merb?

> >
> >> investor was quite impresed with speed of development but of course
> >> there's trouble in paradise .. he hired a consultant :/ - this guy AFAIK
> >> did lot's of work but only in PHP and he is trying to convince investor
> >> PHP is way to go.
> >
> > PHP beats Rails in certain aspects; for instance if development of the
> > site is seasonal in nature, as opposed to continuous, the customer
> > is likely to be hiring as they need. The large availability of PHP
> > developers plays in its favour.
> >
>
> possibility of continous development is one of strong points of rails,
> and that's why i'm advertising it, code writen by that large group of
> php developers is usually unmaintainable. I had plenty of expirience
> with php and i know how strangely can be php written, and rails forces
> good practices like MVC, and ruby i much cleaner langue then php to
> begin wth

Here I totally agree with you.  In fact, I'd argue that Rails is a
better choice for a "seasonally" developed project than the average
PHP application.

Nicely written PHP code can be picked up quickly by a new developer,
but from what I've seen except for some large open-source php efforts
like mediawiki, there's a lot of not so nice PHP code out there.  I've
tried a couple of times to take on maintenance of PHP apps and have
always had to turn down the gig.

On the other hand, Rails apps tend to be easy to pick up even "second
hand."  Most follow the convention over configuration philosophy, so
they all tend to have similar structure.  And the good ones tend to
have nice test suites which make it easier for the new guy to grok
what it's supposed to do.

So even though the population of Rails savvy programmers might be
smaller than the PHP community, there's a much higher probability that
any of then could pick up and existing Rails app than a random PHP
programmer could understand a random PHP application.

On the other hand, how many will understand your custom MVC framework?

Of course if you're looking for job security AFTER you get the gig....


-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/