Ruby on Rails vs PHP?
 

What are the pros and cons?

I hear RoR is awesome. However, you have few solid Ruby coders and developers in case you need something down the line.

Discuss.

Should be comparing Ruby vs PHP, or something like RoR vs. Symphony: Language vs language, or framework vs. framework.

Well, borked had referred this chap to me for some overflow work. However, he prefer to do everything in Ruby.

I have heard of Ruby, and heard good things about it. However, I have also heard it is hard to find good programmers for long term projects who write good code in Ruby. Where there are more people who know, and write, solid PHP code.

My main concern is using Ruby on a module based site and running into issues down the line where I can't find a Ruby coder timely, or dependable for changes and additions.

Ruby offers really no benefits to you, only headaches... there are may be some benefits for the programmer, but that's not really your problem... with Ruby you will probably pay a premium to get stuff developed and you will have to jump through hoops to make it happen...:2 cents:

php hands down. With so many people developing in php you cant go wrong.

Thanks. That is a good explanation.

:thumbsup

There was a really good thread on this not too long ago. Sorry I'm not going to find it for you :)

woj was dead on... the benefits of RoR lay ONLY in the development... Better (read more traditional) OO support and the language construct differs quite a bit and allows for different ways to handle data manipulation. The RoR hype is spawned solely from developers...

It's slower to process server side, it's a HUGE pain in the ass to setup... PHP via Fast-cgi using nginx has been proven to be THE fastest setup you can get translating to less server costs on your end. Ruby does now have Passenger (mod_rails) so it's a bit easier to setup on Apache installations but I digress...

As woj stated you'll pay a premium for RoR developers because there are so few. This really comes into play if you're trying to get something done, even a simple change, and you can't find ANY...

PHP developers are a dime a dozen but good ones are VERY hard to find. However you're guaranteed to find someone to do cheap work to make a simple change so it's a much safer bet :)

I have a couple of guys that are excellent with it, but the availability is a little hard some times.

PHP > *

8chars.

:thumbsup :thumbsup

I am not worried about 'cheap'. I am worried about being expandable.

So a year down the line something needs to be fixed, or a new module added on, I can have it done with ease. Not having to rebuild the entire script and site from scratch.

:disgust

congrats on the 25k!! :thumbsup

what i said, php hands down

:thumbsup

RoR is great if you can support it. PHP installations usually have most of the functions you're going to need already. You'll also get fewer coders who want to assume either - but with PHP you know you're going to get a bunch of shit, 9/10 times.

I know of 4 developers that swear by RoR, 1 of which ripped out all I wrote in PHP in favour of RoR for the main site of a large company. Both scripts were MVC-based, both scripts were 100% modular, he just preferred to do it in RoR, but identical site at the end.

That logic I don't understand - is it to keep him maintaining the code knowing how few RoR developers there are, is it because his PHP knowledge was less than RoR, I don't think so, it's just he preferred RoR.

RoR developers say it takes less time to develop than in PHP, but I disagree. The example above took about half the time to develop in PHP, although I think it's because I knew the db better, not sure.

If you can get this done in PHP, then go for it, but knowing the project, it absolutely *must* be an MVC framework or else it will never work the way you want it to - that I'm sure about :2 cents:

and fwiw, I got very interested in RoR, invested time understanding it and can write a hello world tour with members area, but that is as far as I went - there isn't the interest from clients for RoR than there is PHP, so why waste my time?

I'm working with someone thats developing something in RoR and I have to say, it's coming along pretty fast. I have my concerns, but they are going to stay with the project and this is what they want to use.

:2 cents: from a man in da know

I agree, MVC is the way to go... I should really release my own framework I've developed over the past 10 years to the public, I'm sure the PHP community would love it...

But I'm torn, I'm also a big supporter of private enterprise and my framework has been hard won. It's my bread and butter and I can develop things in a fraction of the time it takes other developers.

Being OO, completely modular, and using true MVC design principals so that I can swap out a data source without ever touching a controller or view... I use DatabaseObjects for example:

Class User extends MySQLObject, it has common methods used across any Parent DB Object Class...

$user = new User($id);
$user->getFormData();
$user->updateDB();

That's all I need to write in order to process form data, populate the new data for a user row and update the database... Everything is handled out of my way, cleaning, escaping, structuring the SQL, etc...

If I want to handle users through LDAP, it's easy

Class User extends LDAPObject

$user = new User($id);
$user->getFormData();
$user->updateDB();

I have prebuilt parent classes for SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, LDAP, and even flat file storage... I can swap from data source to data source with a few characters worth of changes...

Anyway, probably boring 99% of the people in here but that's an insight into the data side of things in my own code :P

+1 MVC

:winkwink:

I think this is why I see zero benefit of RoR. After many years, I have my preferred set of classes or "base" to start any site from, including config dir, common classes/includes, modified/hacked Smarty and AdoDB libraries, etc...

So to me, the "ability to set things up faster with RoR" doesn't apply and IMO that is really the only thing it has going for it right now.

It's always good to know though, as the more languages you can know will only help you. Especially once you find out the high-paying freelance work is in fixing other people's work, not doing your own from scratch :winkwink:

Toe hee!!

Is their a rails like frame work for PHP.

Here is a video of a tool I use http://www.deklarit.com/demo/

:thumbsup

americans don't say chap :2 cents::2 cents:

:pimp:pimp

here is a nice read for you
http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/...ck_to_p_1.html

I always recommend to any new clients that are looking to build an application from scratch to go with what is already out there, and improve upon it. In this case I use CakePHP for all new, fresh projects that require the MVC design, rapid application development, and structure that is lacking from a completely new project. Afterall, I get to shape it and make it the way I want, Cake just keeps it clean, organized and functional.

Plus, RoR happy guys will respect PHP more when they try out Cake, because it's modeled after RoR :2 cents::2 cents:

Is their a good php framework for OR mapping

quoted for truth!

I use cake alot, it's a solid framework with everything that is missing or just plain shit in PHP (e.g. proper ORM). The flexibility is awesome, with cache control and all it's my style. I like to control things to the HTTP response header level :)
:2 cents:

If you like MCV and want things to be modular but don't necessarily want to go with Rails, get someone to do it in PHP that knows their shit about CakePHP.

There's also the PHP framework CodeIgniter
Seems Expression Engine was built on it.

The Symphony Project has a lot of ORM stuff, but you'll also have to wire-up a bunch of stuff. Not bad though.

I keep hearing a lot about CodeIgniter.

I am looking at CakePHP and CodeIgniter.

Jay

oh yeah, the router rocks in Cake :)

CodeIgniter is a lot less strict as far as development goes. Or shall I say laxed. It's very easy to make an application without even following the MVC design pattern with CI but CakePHP will make you follow it, or it will be a bitch about how you are setting up and developing your application.

In my opinion, Cake has made me a much better web developer because I stick to a set of standards that are very welcome in most development teams and the conventions aren't all that bad, either.

I say give em both a try, see which one fits you best.

cakephp!!

So PHP has been following Rails' moves?

:thumbsup