From: Marc Heiler <shevegen@...>
Date: 2007-11-07T00:24:51+09:00
Subject: Language Popularity - PHP vs Ruby?

Hi,

I decided to make this _rather_ short, because I think noone wants
to read a lot of long stuff. It is still too long though.
But please believe me, I thought some time about the content.

On http://www.langpop.com/ the author has some nice graphs.
The trend seems to show that PHP is (still) a very popular
language. PHP at the same time however, is a horrible
language compared to ruby. I also do NOT at all believe
that any speed difference was an important factor for
PHP's popularity rise, nor is today. I think PHP benefitted
from a growing web world, and in return helped (foster)
the web world grow as well, together with apache and MySQL.
(I remember the perl-cgi days ... )

Ruby has Rails, but Rails needs more libraries, and Rails has a
very specific world-view (MVC) whereas PHP basically just cares
about getting the c**p outta *SQL and the "thing done", as ugly
as it may be. We could use Ruby instead for web-stuff, but Ruby
as such lacks in this regard here and there, i.e. at times
mod_ruby was just a pain to install, online-docu for ruby is
still not that good (even though a lot has changed the last 2
years... Pickaxe was wonderful but things change so quickly...)
ruby-cgi stinks a bit since it does not report where it
found an error and is rather slow compared to a .php site,
and "killer apps" like a phpBB variant for _ruby_ do not
seem to shape up _without_rails (and even with rails, it
seems a LOT of work..)

Does anyone notice .rhtml files at all on the www?
I see .php pages all the time. (Almost) all the webshops use
them (yuck). Loads of blogs use php. The basic underlying task of
what these scripts do is so simple, but ruby doesnt grow in this
area as php did. Rails alone can not be the solution to compete
with php on that area (assuming we want that) due to the lesser
flexibility (I have experienced that MANY people who learn rails
are just outright confused by ruby...):

  - Simplicity sometimes beats conventions.
  - Ugliness sometimes beats beauty.

This is NOT an anti-rails post. This is a PRO post to get
ruby fit for the www. Or at least, fitter/better!

Back to www.langpop.com for querying top 3 "jobs wanted"
notes, PHP and SQL is among them (rank 3 / rank 1).
Yuck yuck yuck. But you see it still seems popular and I dare
claim they would be better off using what is *needed* to
complete a job in an elegant fashion - with ruby instead.
At least that is my firm opinion - well written ruby code
is shorter and more elegant than well written php code
of comparable "feature set".

The del.icio.us site was also "analyzed" on http://www.langpop.com/ -
ruby and python both seem more popular than in the other grows.
That must mean, that people search for both quite a lot.
For example, Ogre3d, Blender project and the small game
engine FiFE all have usable python bindings.
No perl, no lua, no ruby on that.
But ...

PHP also wins on del.icio.us and in fact is only beaten
by _JAVASCRIPT_  !
Does this hint at the importance of the www? :)

My conclusio, even if people heard that too ofte... and I
promise to be silent about it for some months to :D

  I think the www should be one of the most important
  aspects for ruby!
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.