http://www.oreill

ynet

 .com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html

the comments are interesting and actually echo some of my concerns with switching to

PHP

  instead of

asp

 

.net

 

The biggest gripe seems to be that

PHP

  is ugly. I think this as well, though, I dont know that I really care much anyway, since most of my

ASP

  is ugly. I think most of the problem with the language is the number of shitty script-kiddie retards that code in it. Hacks, if you will. These people make any language look like shit. These are the people who give the rest of us a bad name.

I'm gonna check out rails, just because, but by no stretch am I going to focus on it. Would be a stupid move for advancement. the only real reason I decided on

PHP

  was because of its prevalence. I also will do

ASP

 

.net

  in the next year as well, to better support my future enterprise level clients. and that will be it.
Classic

ASP

  for old school sites on windows

PHP

  for sites on

linux

 , and probably will become my "quick and dirty" language.

asp

 

.net

  using c# will be my enterprise dev language.

dunno though, probably will all change, but that s the plan.

I LOVED it Nop, thanks for the link. My thoughts:

Man, does a statement like that bring out the religeioids
It's amazing to me when people start talking about "That Language SUCKS" and "

PHP

  is SHIT" because it's so clearly younger programmers that haven't a clue. Any and every language is ugly, incoherent nonsense that can't do squat when programmed by someone that is clueless. Therefore, ROR may be better for some simply because of what he says in the beginning of the article, "Rails is a paint-by numbers, do as I say framework [sic]" For me, I hate this - after 30 years of coding I know damn well how I want my code to look, how to make it clean and re-readable after a couple years of not seeing it. So the restriction of someone ELSEs idea of the way my code should look is both unreasonably confining and frustrating. That doesn't make it wrong.

Is there anything that Rails can do that

PHP

  can't? No!
For the most part, at least in a broad stroke, can't we say that about any language pair and in either direction? Well, yes and no. I believe the article makes it clear that Rails is strong and capable - but the very thing that can make

PHP

  ugly is it's benefit -

PHP

  as a language is literally without a face. You can do just about anything with it with pretty code or ugly code. You can write very verbose high-levelly looking stuff or you can extend the language directly with C++... you have the benefits of the widest spectrum of programmability available, with a minimum of framework restrictions to confine you. I love that. I write all my own stuff, hand rolled. Frameworks, to me, suck - unless their mine. So again, the very thing that would piss a lot of people off about

PHP

  is why I love it.

Sometimes, the best tool for the job is the one you know
Absolutely... and sometimes not. It was very brave of him to throw it all away and try Rails for 2 years ... very brave. But there's a flaw in his language choice methodolodgy - he did not do enough research before hand. Had he, he might have seen the deficiencies of the framework before he committed so much time and effort into the new site. On the other hand, I have changed languages so many times it's not even funny - I've been a BASIC programmer (loads of different dialects), several different assemblies, a short period of APL purgatory, dBASE, Clipper, C, C++, VB, Pascal, Delphi, Kylix and now

PHP

  and

Javascript

 . My last change, from Kylix to

PHP

 /JS was accented by research into a Java/EJB style of

programming

  or a

.Net

  style... I arrived at

PHP

 /JS as my new MO and I believe that, at least for the forseeable horizon and slightly beyond, it will satisfy all of my requirements quite handily. In each case, I did a considerable amount of research in [wheverever I needed to go] before I did it... often times

programming

  things twice - in both my comfortable current language and in the new candidate language. The result was a breadth of understanding that is difficult to get simply by reading the good press of a language.

In some ways that article is like a *good* political discussion, punctuated at the end by the stupid extremists. Here's a guy that's read both Ann Coulter and Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh and Stephanie Miller. Having gone across the aisle really hard to see what was there, he did not like it and returned to his original roots. Bravo! How I wish that the extremists on both sides of the political aisle were as open and well read.

An excellent article, thanks again Nop.

And BTW,

PHP

  rules and Rails sucks. 

/p

I had just found it and did not have time to comment so just dumped it here.

Pretty much sums it up.

Also important part of the article is most of his new system can be attributed to ROR.
Only critisim I have is why did he wait 2 years before he switch

Use the right language for the right job.

thats funny. 2 years is a long time.

i don't really know much about rails except that it has alot of fanboys - but what were they trying to do that they couldn't accomplish in 2 years?
either rails has some serious flaws as a framework or they have some serious flaws as developers.

if im not mistaken rails tries to hide the database layer from you wich sounds dangerous to me for large or complex projects.
i've been playing with django recently which similarly abstracts the database with models defined in

python

  but i still start my projects by defining my data model in sql.
the

python

  defined models are very convenient when coding the application but i wont rely on a framework to generate my database.
im no computer scientist but i see my database as the foundation of my application.

as much as i don't like

php

  it's probably the right tool for many web projects.
if i was going to hire programmers id probably want

php

  guys cause their cheap and easily replaceable  .

Amen.

http://www.sqlobject.org/
where ruby on rails stole the idea of abstracting a database.
probably one of the finest examples of metaclass

programming

 

Also generates the sql of creating,modifying etc the database tables even.
Since it uses metaclass easy to add new database type.

i think it can even add remove column on table.
all without you having to know sql.

looking at the examples, django's models are almost a clone of sqlobject.
this is pretty sweet. i heard of sqlobject and sqlalchemy reading about

python

  web frameworks but always thought of them in the context of web applications, i never occurred to me that they aren't tied to any web frameworks.

imo database abstraction like this can make coding so much faster and easier but being able to define your db in sql is a must.

almost 99% of DB stuff u need to do can be done in sqlobject , to top it all off because of metaclasses, it automatically will work on all db.
if in the freakish event u need to play with sql you can.

you just old skool
it makes u feel more manly playing with the sql
sounds like the same arguement 15 years ago.
You just have to be able to access your computer registers and memory directly.

sql is like spinach. it puts hair on your chest.
with sqlobject your probably right for most of my projects. it even has indexes.
it's more with web frameworks like django or  rails i don't trust.

Perhaps that's why I've never really been attracted to female DBAs.

ok i am slow today i just get it 
heya what ever makes ur tractor go is cool with me, as long as u signup under my affiliate id

just browsing around the cd baby website, i really don't see how it couldn't be coded in 2 years in ANY language. i am curious as to some of the problems they faced. although i should have prefaced this observation with the fact that i have never taken a development project of any real scope comparable, so my view may be overly biased to coding projects with much shorter durations.

Nice perspective and I have to agree TJ... prety straightforward retail site IMO. I have many that are much more complicated, coded by hand and didn't take anywhere near that long. Additionally, my retails shops are backed up by a complete inventory and fulfillment management suite (all web based) that is WAY WAY more complicated than anything I see there... so I see how he did the "whole thing in 2 months in

PHP

 " but I can't see why a "Rails Expert" couldn't do that pretty quickly...

lol@TJ
the kid who yelled the emperor have no clothes .

Thinking about it yah, in 2 years you could have coded it in assember 

I just assumed that the problems they faced where with deployment.
Ruby has a testing server, (similar to what cherrypy has and other

python

  based webframe works)
This is very powerful, you can change variables at runtime in the server, so you can test new idea code etc right away.
As a result testing new ideas in these framework very fast .

But the problem with ruby is for deployment you have to do some sort of complex thing where u shove it behind an

apache

  or lighttpd server.
Lets just say when i tried it my head exploded.
But no where does he mention that problem.

Biggest bitches about ruby is that it lacks maturity (as in lack of cpan etc), and its threads are total shit.
Also ruby does not have a VM like

perl

  and

python

  has (they are working on it granted).

Ruby is actually brutally simple to set up once youve done it once.


Never try to run any intense ruby app using fcgi or modfcgi.

I use a cluster of mongrel servers (totally light weight...I love mongrel) and I proxy off requests using a PEN load balancer.....I redirect all requests for static files (css, jpg, etc) to the

apache

  server and everything else comes through my mongrel cluster.


more information on this type of setup:
http://blog.wishlisting.com/?p=20

lol @

seo

 
thanx
anything is easy once u do it once.
anyway i make give ruby a try later if i can set it up

My read as a sys admin concerned with performance and scalability is that RoR is *too slow*.  That alone will kill it, because IT manglers are a tight-fisted, money grubbing lot as are their suit masters.  That's why we're (sys admins) stuck supporting throw-away x86 hardware and having to build overly complex clustering solutions instead of using bullet-proof enterprise grade hardware in straight-forward redundant failover configurations.  There's a reason why the DoD and $gov_agencies still use Sun and IBM boxes.

=RT=

Who has seen a

Solaris

  box happily toddle along at a load of 40 on a 2-proc box without falling over dead, *and* respond (albeit slowly) at the CLI so the sys admin could fix it--try that with

Linux

 

Fishin'A, bubba.

I have a huge, ancient and reliable as the day is long Sun box as the front end for a variety of retail applications and you just can't kill the thing. Sun hardware &

Solaris

  is definitely enterprise class. That being said, when I have to buy a bunch of

mac

 hines for throw away applications I just can't spend that, so I wind up doing clustered stuff - or dedicated box per application if I'm working them that hard.

Nice post RT

Yep and the reason is called job security.
After they make this tangled mess of

mac

 hines, no one can fire them
That is why most sys admin only show up for work like 2 days a week and the days they are in they do nothing