Comments on: PHP vs Ruby on Rails, Part 3

By: oscar

oscar — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:36:14 +0000

Jan 2008 Well, I did not read all comments, but, about speed and memory … php as cgi uses lots of memroy and is very slow, so it is ruby, but Ruby may function as an apache module like php. Does anyone know about speed and memory differences in this arena?

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:13:45 +0000

This is a great overview for someone just starting out with Rails - and its over 2 years old! Thanks for the thoughts and summary on these two web development options.

By: Ryan Zec

Ryan Zec — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 19:44:19 +0000

Yea one thing I found it for sure it that rails looks at the database model and create the structure every time you run it which is very inefficient.

By: GaouZief

GaouZief — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:02:24 +0000

Why on earth should framework functionality be incapsulated inside the language interpreter???

this RoR “Feature” which is basically what makes code thinner is Exactly the kind of thing you should avoid in web development because you loose flexibility and become a rather stupid developer, you no longer build Web Applications, you build “Rails” Applications.

I’ve built pretty complex, restful applications in PHP for ages and after testing ruby i’m pretty confident i’ve made the best choice.

“Ruby inspects your database to optimize the datamodel????” are you kidding me, how on earth is that a feature for serious developers?

By: Ryan Zec

Ryan Zec — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:17:37 +0000

“Rails is many good ideas that will someday take over much of web development. But there are a few things that need fixing too.”

I am sorry but Rails is not going to take over much of web development like PHP IMO. I am sure by the time ruby become faster, which i don’t think it will ever be as fast as php, I bet there will already be a very good port of rail to PHP. Like i said on another page here, using a language because of a framework is retarded.

Also says “Throw more power at it” when something in rails runs much slower than php is also a poor way of fixing things.

By: Alan Brown

Alan Brown — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:11:30 +0000

the problem with cake and other rails-like php frameworks is that that there are way to many of them. and there are no books, at least there weren’t for cake when i was trying to make it work

By: Alan Brown

Alan Brown — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:06:07 +0000

What hooked me on ruby on rails was the fact that many of the problems of web development are addressed with clever solutions that not only work, but can easily be taken apart and changed by someone with limited intelligence such as myself.

For a long time, I've been thinking it shouldn't be that hard to test web apps. You just need to run request parameters thru a piece of code, right? Do I really need Mercury Interactive to do that? Turns out I just needed Rails.

And why the heck do I need to code to these EJB monstrosities or tell Hibernate whats in the database? Turns out Rails just looks at the database and figures it out for you, and does it all the time when you are in development mode. duh.

And speaking of development mode, Rails doesn't make me compile everything or tell it that I changed a file or make me reload the browser or bounce the server. It simply finds the latest stuff when things change.

Simply put, Rails relieves from having to do a lot of tedious stuff that computers do quite nicely. Would I prefer that it be easier to learn Ruby (there is still agony to be found in Ror)? Yes. Would I rather it ran as fast as my code were implemented with transistors? That'd be cool.

I'm not that big a fan of dynamic typing, especially when that slight typo confounded me for hours by making Ruby see two variables when I thought I was dealing with one. Developer productivity? A 10 to 1 increase? Not on your life. Maybe this will change with more experience. You do write less code, but it ain't free.

Rails is many good ideas that will someday take over much of web development. But there are a few things that need fixing too.

By: The Ron

The Ron — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:58:27 +0000

The main advantages of Ruby on Rails is DRY or Don't Repeat Yourself. Programming in PHP made me repeat my code quite often for templates and such. Also being able to run a WEBrick server on your local machine without making the changes live helps.

You mentioned before that many big enterprises use slow languages such as Java. The reason for this is that the companies hire a developer or a team of developers to make the website. To save time, the developers use a quick-developed, resource-hogging language. The enterprise can't even tell the difference. So if it helps the developer, it will be used.

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:28:51 +0000

PHP is great, PHP5 has greatly improved its OO, and PHP6 will do even better. Cake and PHPRails are great frameworks and are much less cpu intensive then Rails and Ruby.

By: David

David — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:41:18 +0000

I’m a long-time PHP developer, but I develop in a couple of other languages that I’ve used over the years. I’ve programmed with other languages derived from Ruby (not Rails, yet) and my answer is… … …I’ve got to try something before I make a comment on it. No matter how much I read about it, I can’t know for sure until I get my hands a little dirty, so to speak.

I can understand why it’d be slow, and why it may take a while for the shared hosting to adopt RoR, but with the speed at which the internet and technology evolves, I doubt it’ll be long. For example, one of my web hosts has recently added RoR to their arsenal, so I will probably be testing it out soon.

The very least I can say is that the Ruby-based languages I’ve used are fun. =)