I prefer Ruby as well, but I definitely found being a Ruby newbie on Windows very painful. This was several years ago though.
Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#12I use what I know best, PHP. It's not the language that builds a good site, its the person. I'd learn RoR if I thought it'd make a difference, but I don't think it would.
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#13If you're comparing the languages, Ruby beats PHP any day. But if you're comparing PHP with ROR, then you need to throw in a Rails like framework for PHP.
I recommend Codeigniter - www.codeigniter.com
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#14[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#15Most people will answer with whichever language they know best. Both are well-supported and well-suited for building a scalable maintainable web app. Unless you're doing something truly earth-shattering that specifically requires features (or libraries) in one or the otheer, use whatever feels more intuitive for you.
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd second the Python recommendation. Switching from custom PHP to Python (specifically Django) saved me a ton of development headaches.
Yeah, I used Django a few times before. It's very nice. Though, Django is pretty slower than any PHP framework(from the frameworks I've worked with)
When I first started using Django, I wasn't sure about it either, for a few different reasons - but performance wasn't one of them. Long story short, I'm glad I invested the time in taking it up...
Django was actually my first use of Python - so you can imagine how pleased I was to replace a custom PHP app with something I just learned - and in record time. (if you're interested, the web app was: http://www.snapact.com/)
I have noticed no issues with performance as compared to PHP.
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd second the Python recommendation. Switching from custom PHP to Python (specifically Django) saved me a ton of development headaches.
Yeah, I used Django a few times before. It's very nice. Though, Django is pretty slower than any PHP framework(from the frameworks I've worked with)
This is an old link (that I wish would be updated) about performance of some various frameworks (in various languages):
http://www.alrond.com/en/2007/jan/25/performance-test-of-6-l...
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#18I feel your pain about the Windows issue!
I've been a PHP programmer through and through for the past three years and had no complaints about it. That is until of course I met RoR.
After the first year or so of occasionally playing with RoR, I found that my PHP started to have a decidedly Ruby accent to it. I was making heavy use of create_function() and array_map(), and was designing interfaces that hid more and more of the inner workings of my code in abstractions.
Now I still do PHP as a day job, but I absolutely hate it. Not because of the language itself but because I have to put up with other peoples complicated procedural code. I'm not implying that everything has to be OO all the time, I'm instead referring to code written by developers who have absolutely no interest in OO programming or MVC when building fairly complex content managed site.
For freelance work, its RoR all the way. Because Rails imposes quite a fixed structure (fixed compared to PHPs open-endedness), I don't need to spend days trawling through someone elses code before I can get started on a site.
Now, there are frameworks in PHP as well, but they focus on different things. Zend for example is a collection of libraries that you can pull together free-form into a system of your design (though there is of course a recommended directory structure). This flexibility comes at a price, i.e. that you have to initialize and configure all the working parts of the MVC stack essentially by hand.
The focus of rails is unapologetically to make a site work now, and make it easy for the developer building it to make required changes for that site. This comes through in pretty much every interaction you have with the framework (unless of course, you're on windows!)
The Ruby language itself is an absolute joy to program with if you cut your teeth on OO programming. You really don't know what you're missing until you learn the inner workings of the object model. If I hadn't given it a chance (i.e. spend a good few weeks hacking away on a ruby-based project) I wouldn't appreciate the benefits of it, sort of like what Paul Graham was saying in his Blub Programming article.
Re: Ask HN: PHP or ROR.
#19I'm a PHP fugitive, so take this with a pinch of salt. 3 years ago I thought Rails was worth the pain of working with Ruby on Windows compared to the problems I was facing keeping myself enthusiastic in PHP. Now you've got the option of developing Rails sites in JRuby, that pain is much, much reduced. Honestly, it's worth a shot if you haven't tried it yet.