From: Shaun Lloyd <list@...>
Date: 2012-05-22T12:07:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby through CGI and Rails

  On 21/05/12 21:33, Matthew R Chase wrote:
> I would not consider CGI obsolete. Unless you are referring to ruby's
> CGI library.  In which case, I still wouldn't consider it obsolete, but
> because of rails I imagine it has fallen out of preference.  (though I
> don't know what the rails equivalent is, I'm sure there is an
> alternative in the rails world).
>
> I think a lot of people come to rails because they consider it easier.
> I've heard people come to ruby because of rails.  That's an argument
> that disappoints me; ruby is an excellent language and deserving of more
> credit than just rails.
>
I came to ruby because of ruby but found rails to be almost as fundamental
as a linux kernal in a gnu system.
> Not being a rails user, the next paragraph may be wrong.
> Rails is a framework for web application development.  Personally I
> don't like the cost of running rails.
I agree totally. And you are wrong a little about Rails because it 
really feels more
like a religion that a application architecture the way some people take 
about it.


>   I understand it does run as its
> own server.  And code written for rails will not translate because it
> relies upon the framework.
Furthermore you have version to version conflicts.
>    Conversely, code weitten in ruby can more
> easily be translated to another language if necessary.
This is true to a degree, but their are so many features in ruby
that are simple not found in perl/python or php thus any translation
would need to find patterns in each language do deal with all
the structs that ruby has in it's design, BIG job.

>    And rails takes
> over storage; my impression is that by default it is easy to use MySQL,
> but if you wanted to use mongo instead that would be more difficult.
> A straight cgi application need not 'connect the dots with shtml.'  This
> is the manner in which I use ruby.  I write cgi scripts that puts html
> to the client.  And I use ruby's CGI library to read what gets sent.  I
> don't use rails or shtml.
>
Thanks very much for your help Mathew. You seem to be in the minority.

I would appreciate finding out more specifics of such a setup.

Do you have to worry about url's in that do you rewrite to clean up 
cgi-bin etc. ?

Are you on apache, do you use phusion / fastcgi etc. ?

Have you done a profiling of ruby in relation to speed ?

Thanks!