[Hidden-tech] Ruby on Rails

[Rich]

Mark Bucciarelli wrote:
>> Are any of you currently using 'Rails? If so, what has the learning
>> curve been like, and what are your overall development & deployment
>> experiences?
>>     

We looked into it and we're impressed with the developer performance and 
basic professional system.

I am very unimpressed with the compatibility with existing systems and 
internal system implementation details.  Esp, the do-it-yourself language.
I looked at Ruby a while ago and was not happy with the syntax -- I have 
been studying computer language syntax for over 20 years, and
fully understand there is new syntax (and semantic) design ideas coming 
all the time - some are radical changes and some are gradual,
and more over some allow smooth integration with prior development 
efforts and some stand alone.

In short, Ruby is a radical new syntax and requires a development effort 
based totally on it and a fully object capable team, which works
for some efforts and not others.  For those of us with some non-object 
oriented developers or even semi-programmers as part of
the projects we work on - it is critical that any new system play nicely 
with older system and ongoing projects -- Ruby does not.

> - if you name your table fields according the their rules (for example,
>   the "id" field is always an auto-increment unique key) it is amazingly
>   fast to get things up and running.  I believe this extends to
>   inter-table relationships.
>   
This is an example.

> - The interpreter is, like Perl, a RAM pig. Unlike Perl, it doesn't
>   really work as plain CGI.  You really need to keep it resident.
>
> - Development mode leaks.  Don't run very long in this mode on
>   your web host's server.  ;)  This is not a bug, apparantly it
>   is by design.
>
> - Runs well with fastcgi + lighttpd.  :)
>   
As I noted above.
> - Hackers whose opinion I respect have nothing but good things to
>   say about Ruby.
>   
The reason for this is ignoring the practical sides of system 
development - standing on it's own ruby-on-rails is a very impressive
system.

In an attempt to bring what is the most popular web programming 
environment - esp for an amazing number of semi-professional programmers
(and by that I mean the level of training in object techniques they 
have) - and that is PHP - here is an article describing some of efforts 
to create such
a platform in PHP: 
http://www.phpit.net/article/ten-different-php-frameworks/

We have done some work using http://www.symfony-project.com/ and I found 
it to be the most production ready:
I worked with both Prado and cakephp and found them somewhat clumsy to 
use - but that was 2 months ago and all continue to progress.

Any others exploring the Rapid development path / agile programming path 
using PHP ?

-- 
Rich Roth
CEO On-the-net

Bringing you complex online systems since the net was young
http://www.tnrglobal.com - http://www.on-the-net.com/rr/