Rails Shared Hosting
mattmaroon.com
Rails Shared Hosting
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#2I was going to just mention heroku, a service that I absolutely love as a beta user, but someone beat me to it in the blog comments.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#3They definitely will say that they don't care how popular is, but that is complete bullshit.
37signals is popular because of Rails, the more popular Rails is, the better for 37signals products.
As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills. Simple as that.
For a similar reason, the infamous OS wars are not as pointless as they seem. If I invest in Linux or OS X, I also have an interest to protect that investment, which means the OS in question should keep a minimum level of popularity.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#4They definitely will say that they don't care how popular is, but that is complete bullshit. 37signals is popular because of Rails, the more popular Rails is, the better for 37signals products. As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills. Simple as that. For a similar reason, the infamous OS wars are not as pointless as they seem. If I invest in Linux or OS X, I also have an…
"As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills."
I know some COBOL consultants who'd disagree.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#5I was going to just mention heroku, a service that I absolutely love as a beta user, but someone beat me to it in the blog comments.
So I've looked at heroku a bit, and I have to say it's pretty promising. I assume eventually they'll allow you to run your own domains off of it, maybe offer you email, etc. I actually somehow didn't meet the guys at the first Y C dinner, but I think they're going to make a lot of money.
The problem is that it's only one company. Though I'm sure they'll have clones if/when they are successful, the barrier to entry there is a lot higher than simply supporting a language like PHP on a shared hosting system. (I suppose I'm only guessing here, as I've no experience with either building a Heroku like site or operating a shared hosting one, but the sheer numbers certainly imply that.) So there are always going to be 100x more hosting options for a newbie PHP developer, even if the Heroku model catches on.
I chose PHP because I found scores of web hosts for it, and I knew that if I ever wanted to switch, I had options. Also, I think brand new programmers (think high school kids) get in largely by Googling for web hosts, signing up an account, then coding in whatever is available. If 95% of the web hosts they look at are touting PHP, that's going to play a large factor in their choice.
Not to mention that Facebook, Yahoo, etc. are in PHP, as you can easily see by looking at a URL, and that no really large sites are in Rails, and even if they were you wouldn't know it at a glance.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#6They definitely will say that they don't care how popular is, but that is complete bullshit. 37signals is popular because of Rails, the more popular Rails is, the better for 37signals products. As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills. Simple as that. For a similar reason, the infamous OS wars are not as pointless as they seem. If I invest in Linux or OS X, I also have an…
"As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills." I know some COBOL consultants who'd disagree.
In what sense? I am guessing they made good money with Cobol for a while. Certainly more than if it had never become popular.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#7Nice post, Matt. I think that you're absolutely right. It doesn't do well for the mind share of the framework if it requires a CS degree to deploy.
But then, DHH has never really said that he was passionate about the users of his framework. For an example, see the image below.
http://pocoo.org/~mitsuhiko/rails_motivation.jpg
DHH has long said that he improves Rails based on what he and 37 Signals needs, and not what the community needs. His attitude seems to be that it's his framework and he can do what he wants to.
So, no. I don't really see the Rails hosting issue being fixed any time soon.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#8They definitely will say that they don't care how popular is, but that is complete bullshit. 37signals is popular because of Rails, the more popular Rails is, the better for 37signals products. As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills. Simple as that. For a similar reason, the infamous OS wars are not as pointless as they seem. If I invest in Linux or OS X, I also have an…
"As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills." I know some COBOL consultants who'd disagree.
"As a Rails programmer, the more popular Rails is, the more worth are your Rails skills."
This is still subject to the laws of supply and demand. Your Rails skillz will be valuable at a time like now - where there are a healthy number of startups using the framework for development, and a sufficient shortage of experienced Rails devs to hire. However, if Rails became popular enough that everyone decided to learn it and the number of available jobs didn't shift in proportion, you'll find your skillz less of a commodity.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#9I think there's two separate issues raised by Dreamhost's post.
1. Should Rails have better shared hosting support?
2. Is it nice for a business that wants to make more money by having a new feature implemented to demand that an open source project make their desire a priority, without any offer of quid pro quo?
I don't see much room for debate in either. 1. Of course 2. Of course not.
Re: Rails Shared Hosting
#10I think there's two separate issues raised by Dreamhost's post. 1. Should Rails have better shared hosting support? 2. Is it nice for a business that wants to make more money by having a new feature implemented to demand that an open source project make their desire a priority, without any offer of quid pro quo? I don't see much room for debate in either. 1. Of course 2. Of course not.
2. is of course as well. Rails stands to benefit from having hundreds of shared hosting services promoting their product. The original post wasn't "Rails should support Dreamhost" it was "Rails should support shared hosting."