Anyone used Ruby on Rails and had any success - the shiny vids im watching are tempting me in.... helllllpppp

Don't do it. I'll sort out an intervention and be there within a few hours, provided I can get flights.

Drink lots of fluids and stay away from bright lights.

Hang on man, help is on the way.

but look at the shiny sites....... 

django makes shiny sites. so does cake

php

 .
ruby is for girls.

My sites are gorgeous and shiny, hand rolled HTML using vi.

Ruby? Pffft.

OK, rant over. Why are you intrigued? What is it that Ruby does that your current toolset does not, and particularly given your level of coding expertise, why would you want to limit yourself to the way the Ruby gods want you to?

Im slow and bollocks at coding most things 

however the logic from what i read strikes me as nice in the way it lays out its code.... 

SEO

 idiot = 

I know i know

I guess here's my main thought:

What exactly, are you missing in your current language/framework that is painful enough to necessitate change? I'm all for experimentation and such, but I'm also not one to suck up Advil on a

learn

 ing  quest if not necessary. Did you read the thread here about the guy that went RoR for 2 years then back to

PHP

  and everything's quicker/better/faster? This sort of thing you don't need to waste your time on unless you are experiencing serious deficiencies in <what you are currently using>.

Or is it that the pain is simply "It takes too long" in your current methods and you want something newer and shinier? I understand that, but I'd tread carefully so that you don't take a long walk on a short plank...

<hijack>
That dancing mango sure gets a lot of play over at http://www.affearners.com, have you noticed?
</hijack>

We are mango friendly 

Basically what perks said.
I looked at ROR, biggest problem is trying to actually get the thing to deploy is impossible.

Ruby language is far superior to

PHP

 , but has major short comings.
Since perk basically codes

PHP

  the same way one codes pascal these short comings are not important to him
I on the other hand think a language should be able to do as much as possible in as few of lines as possible
again perk is more of a builder vs I am someone who needs to make a script as fast as possible to get job done.
Ruby compared to

perl

 ,

python

  lack of libraries etc, the libraries they have are immature.

Perl

 's CPAN modules on the other hand are very mature.

Probably u be better off with http://www.catalystframework.org/ or some other

perl

  based framework.

Another option is http://grails.codehaus.org/ (i have not used it).
Groovy is a scripting language, a cross between ruby,java and scheme.
Coolest part is the continuations like they have in ruby.

On the other hand no shortage of class libs, u can just import any java lib (you do not even need source just import a jar)
I may use groovy for a project of mine because it have certain features.

If you got time look at ruby, always good to see how u do shit in different language

i looked at RoR once. It gave me the willies.

Best said, right there.

yeah, that is what I said back in 1999 when I was building web DB applications on top of

perl

 /oracle/PLSQL, and thought it would be interesting to move to Java. So, I dove in and almost drawn!!

Funny thing was about that time

PHP

  was just getting started, and a lot folks where jumping on the

python

  band wagon as a better tool then

Perl

 . Because of my java experience gone bad (if I hear one more fishin cute coding paradigm like "Enterprise Java Beans", i may kill) but my java experience burned me so bad I did not spend a lot of time with

PHP

 , and totally blew of

python

  (both great languages).

in fact, I was so jaded I picked up a copy of SICP and tried to become a scheme junkie.

Coders are just like that. We like to play with the shiny toys, and sometimes get sucked in. I wasted a lot of time that could have been better spent

learn

 ing  more about how

Perl

  worked, coding appropriate data structures, building out frameworks, etc.

now, I ask a couple of simple questions: what tool would work the best (if I dont know, I ask experts I trust) and what has the most support ?  Thats why I am focusing on

PHP

  and

Perl

  again. Because the support is strong AND wide.

Nice post F1972

@freedom
Yep about the same time i tried java, and saw that it sucked.
But i have checked out java many times again with things like jython and later groovy.
Key is keep open mind.

I played with scheme. I am not using it right now for development, except for some legendary shit.
What i

learn

 ed from scheme definitey

teach

  me a lot.

People always say how they wasted thier time

learn

 ing  XXXX.
Or how YYYY was a waste of time.
Ironically these are the same morons who ussualy have a 9-5 job.

Lets take a look at winners.
ATT during thier prime used to spend 25% of thier resources on research. During this time they would file like 10 patents a day.
MIcrosoft = they are always spending tons on research. 95% of thier projects end in failure, but all they need is that 5%. MS is even involved in research in revolutionary new languages that make shit like

PHP

 ,

Python

  etc look primitive.
Google = not sure how much they spend on research, but must be a lot.

One of the CEO of General Electric (another winner) was given a paper showing that only 1 in 20 of thier research projects was successful. His flunky complained about the dismal rate, and asked what can they do to to double success rate. The CEO replied double failure rate.

good points. I think the key for me when it comes to new tools/languages is to keep my mind in "research mode" instead of "blind faith throw everything else out mode". Too much black and white, need more gray in my thinking!!

We all need to