LOL, I'd resent this if in any way, shape or form your opinion led to the downfall of my career, projects or income level :winkwink:

OK we will kill all the servers and move to LAMP. Read

http://shipsoftwareontime.com/2009/0...ment-platform/

Its all about how fast can you develop an application and bring to market. 99% of the projects I have worked on the 20 years the answer has been develop soon and if you need a faster server we will buy a faster server.

The applications that need Google / face-book level scale is so small its not worth the hassle .

Does the open source stack has this many components ?

http://www.componentsource.com/

So you can build an app faster ?

Show me a grid control as good as

how about data base modeling like http://download.deklarit.com/files/A...BModeling.html , how about http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-ajax.aspx


If some one asks me to develop a large scale distributed app that will run on a 100 cluster box then I will say go and find a Unix guy but 99% of the work that is out their is not like this.

RAD < Scalability
RAD < Stability
RAD <> ROI

Most of the good PHP developers that I know have developed their own library of classes or function libraries and can develop most applications pretty quickly... but I digress. You can list how many adult companies run ASP on your fingers... and for good reason. The cost greatly outweighs the possible extra time investment. Show me an app that you think that you believe can't be developed as quickly in a LAMP environment as could be developed using a Microsoft solution. I know what I am talking about because I started my career developing Microsoft solutions and have kept up with the gist of it. If you want to talk about desktop apps... I will agree that Microsoft has the best developer tools... but we are talking about web based solutions and not desktop solutions.

No worries. :) I know what you do... I interviewed to work for you before if you remember. :) I didn't list you because you mentioned Smarty and AdoDB libraries... both of which I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

First 12 years of my carrier I spent developing software in SmallTalk. NasDaq still runs the same order routing software I worked on.

The next 8 years I worked on large adult projects all in C#. The Pay Per Min engine that runs in AEBN, Gamelink, XonDemand etc etc...all most all the large VOD guys is done in C# (I should know because i wrote it).

When it comes to complex apps I will stick to what i know best , which is C#

Ok, all is forgiven :upsidedow

However, I still think Smarty is great especially my "hacked up" version that fixes some bugs, efficiency and adds easy multi-lingual functionalities and other stuff I've needed over various projects. Same for AdoDB :)

fair enough. :) :thumbsup

RoR rocks. Check out our latest deployment of a Rails app - www.eroslife.com. Runs on Amazon EC2 with clustering and rotating backups. No virtual hosting (in the traditional sense) and catastrophes to worry about anymore since everything runs on Amazon's backbone. Hit me up if you need advice/help on your rails app.

I'm a certified Java programmer with over 11 years exp, but if you're thinking of launching an adult site with social networking capabilities, go with RoR.

Now, back to your original question or RoR or Php. I personally don't know much php other than to hack it for my needs, but it seems like RoR and other 'next-gen frameworks' like Django are fast gaining momentum. With that said, php has a very very long track record and a number of high traffic sites already use php.

But RoR is great because the language is very versatile (great for DSL) and both Django and Rails appear more intuitive to understand than php for some developers. Anyway, I encourage you to give RoR a shot.