Our company is mainly made up off application developers but we have a lot of web work coming up so we are deciding which route to take at the moment. We initially identfied ASP.NET 2.0 with the ATLAS AJAX framework because of the RAD features, easy to learn etc. I had read some stuff on ROR and our Boss who is open minded allowed me to create a sample application with ROR. He was impressed with how quickly i picked it up and we are already practicing TDD/MVC/Agile development which makes it more enjoyable to program ROR rather than in ASP.NET it can seem your configuring wizards rather than meaningfull programming. We were really impressed with how easy it was to use AJAX and the RJS stuff is really powerfull. Basically if we can put a proposal together as to why ROR is a real alternative then he will step up or ROR development/training and we will use it for some of the web projects we have lined up. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to links stating the advantages of ROR?, who''s using it?, any sites out there with it at the moment?. I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself. Do the javascript Libraries in ROR have any widgets similar to ASP.NET''s gridviews, treeviews etc as the main reason for choosing ASP.NET is these fancy controls that you can configure with a wizard and ASP.NET does the rest. We already use eclipse so RadRails is a great plug in and is what i used for ROR development but is there any other IDE''s in the pipeline? Any help much appreciated. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Johnny B wrote:> Basically if we can put a proposal together as to why ROR is a real > alternative then he will step up or ROR development/training and we will > use it for some of the web projects we have lined up. Can anyone point > me in the right direction as to links stating the advantages of ROR?,hmm... www.rubyonrails.com? ;-) I think a similar question was debated here just a few days ago ''Marketing Rails'' or something like that. Check the archives. If you are really not able to find it, PM me and i will look it up for you.> who''s using it?, any sites out there with it at the moment?.There are a ''few'' pages listed here: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RealWorldUsage> I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed > of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself.Exactly these are the are the advantages of RoR. Why do you need a site to tell you the same? ;-)> Do the javascript Libraries in ROR have any widgets similar to ASP.NET''s > gridviews, treeviews etc as the main reason for choosing ASP.NET is > these fancy controls that you can configure with a wizard and ASP.NET > does the rest.I don''t know ASP.NET, but be sure to check out these sites: http://script.aculo.us/ http://script.spinelz.org/ more general: http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Plugins> We already use eclipse so RadRails is a great plug in and is what i used > for ROR development but is there any other IDE''s in the pipeline?I don''t know but are you sure you need something different? I mean Radrails is cool, the development is very active etc. Cheers, Peter
On 19 Apr 2006, at 09:57, Johnny B wrote:> I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed > of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself. Do > the javascript Libraries in ROR have any widgets similar to ASP.NET''s > gridviews, treeviews etc as the main reason for choosing ASP.NET is > these fancy controls that you can configure with a wizard and ASP.NET > does the rest.The only thing I really miss in RoR (and yes, I know there are a few commercial JavaScript solutions out there) is a decent grid-on-demand control. Openrico.org''s LiveGrid is very promising, but it lacks a few things : scrollwheel support on the list itself, selection (although this can be implemented using a patch I believe), ? However, the dedication of the people behind Rico is just great, so I''m fairly confident they''ll come with a greatly advanced LiveGrid control in a few weeks/months. Best regards Peter De Berdt
On Wednesday 19 April 2006 08:57, Johnny B wrote:> I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed > of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself.Johnny Another good book is "Beyond Java" by Bruce Tate. He goes about it not by saying that there are better alternatives (Rails is his main example) but by saying that the current systems (Java and by extension .Net) are reaching the end of their useful life for day-to-day web development. Apparently Tate is working on a "management friendly" book but I gave Beyond Java to my boss and he was very receptive. Ashley
For tree widgets, look at livetree. it''s very nice. Why Rails? It will save you money. I''m an engineering manager . I make my living doing enterprise java work and I''m continually blown away by the quality of the rails framework. Originally, I thought "yeah the generation is nice and get''s you something up quickly, but then it''s business as usual." Wrong. Development on rails is easily several times more productive than development on Java. The only thing lacking for me is I haven''t been able to get RadRails running on my Mac, but even working without an IDE, rails development is much faster than development with Java on Eclipse. I expect that your experience regarding .Net will be the same. There are some applications i wouldn''t do on Rails (like a securities trading system) and processing-intense things should probably be off-loaded to a more efficient language (and invoked from rails through a web services interface), but as a basic web development framework rails is very hard to beat.. On 4/19/06, Ashley Moran <work@ashleymoran.me.uk> wrote:> > On Wednesday 19 April 2006 08:57, Johnny B wrote: > > I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed > > of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself. > > Johnny > > Another good book is "Beyond Java" by Bruce Tate. He goes about it not by > saying that there are better alternatives (Rails is his main example) but > by > saying that the current systems (Java and by extension .Net) are reaching > the > end of their useful life for day-to-day web development. > > Apparently Tate is working on a "management friendly" book but I gave > Beyond > Java to my boss and he was very receptive. > > Ashley > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060419/c0617db4/attachment-0001.html
"I had read some stuff on ROR and our Boss who is open minded allowed me to create a sample application with ROR. He was impressed with how quickly i picked it up and we are already practicing TDD/MVC/Agile development which makes it more enjoyable to program ROR rather than in ASP.NET it can seem your configuring wizards rather than meaningfull programming. We were really impressed with how easy it was to use AJAX and the RJS stuff is really powerful." You''ve already discovered it yourself. That same experience you had is going to be mirrored across the board with Rails, you''ll be impressed by how easy it is to do certain things, and that the stuff is really powerful. That''s the advantages. I guess a good argument against ASP.NET is to go ahead and implement the same thing in ASP.NET and see how you feel about it. One other note: Considering a web application is a complicated set of layers, I''m not sure if you want to make your framework decision based on which framework has the fancier UI widgets. I find that generally speaking I spend the least amount of time getting pictures painted on a screen and the most amount of time deep in the guts of the framework. My two cents, Tim Case On 4/19/06, Ashley Moran <work@ashleymoran.me.uk> wrote:> On Wednesday 19 April 2006 08:57, Johnny B wrote: > > I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed > > of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself. > > Johnny > > Another good book is "Beyond Java" by Bruce Tate. He goes about it not by > saying that there are better alternatives (Rails is his main example) but by > saying that the current systems (Java and by extension .Net) are reaching > the > end of their useful life for day-to-day web development. > > Apparently Tate is working on a "management friendly" book but I gave Beyond > Java to my boss and he was very receptive. > > Ashley > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
On 4/19/06, Larry White <ljw1001@gmail.com> wrote:> There are some applications i wouldn''t do on Rails (like a securities > trading system)May I ask why? NO, this is not supposed to be a "duh, you can do ANYTHING with Rails, and everybody who says otherwise is stupid!!1!" type of reply. In fact, I somewhat agree with you, but I recently realized I don''t even know *why* I feel that way. Is it because dynamic scripting languages, by being way less chatty than something like Java, somehow feel more fragile? I seriously wonder. - Hendrik -- http://www.mans.de
Hendrik, I tend to agree with that statement for management reasons, more than technical or development framework issues. I''ve worked for several Insurance companies and Banks where some of the financial algorithms go through some pretty brutal approval processes by certified accountants before they are approved for use in a system. We have several systems written in C and in COBOL, that are blessed by the accountants as accurate. We use these routines for several crucial calculations. One Bank I worked at last year had started the process of getting some Java based web services approved as replacements for these old routines. They hope to get all the approvals some time in 2007. I would expect securities trading companies would have some of the same concerns about accuracy, that Banks and Insurance companies have. It may be due business needs more than a programming choice. -Sean Hendrik Mans wrote:> On 4/19/06, Larry White <ljw1001@gmail.com> wrote: >> There are some applications i wouldn''t do on Rails (like a securities >> trading system) > > May I ask why? NO, this is not supposed to be a "duh, you can do > ANYTHING with Rails, and everybody who says otherwise is stupid!!1!" > type of reply. In fact, I somewhat agree with you, but I recently > realized I don''t even know *why* I feel that way. Is it because > dynamic scripting languages, by being way less chatty than something > like Java, somehow feel more fragile? I seriously wonder. > > - Hendrik > > -- > http://www.mans.de-- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> I''ve worked for several Insurance companies and Banks where some of the > financial algorithms go through some pretty brutal approval processes > by certified accountants before they are approved for use in a system.Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. - Hendrik -- http://www.mans.de
Well we are looking to replace a number of legacy desktop financial systems created in Visual Basic and fox pro to a web solution but there are not any real complicated calculations involved. I have read some other posts from people stating that they wouldn''t use ROR for financial, transaction heavy or security intensive systems but never got a valid reason apart from the business needs argument above and that ROR is unproven in these area''s. On another note to the initial post about gridview controls, treeview etc, scriptaculous has a number of update tickets in for these controls which i am glad to see. I have looked at rico and http://script.spinelz.org/ and while i am impressed with the examples on their respective sites i suppose what frightens people off(like my boss) is what if work on these open source initiatives slows down or stops completly then you may be come reliant on something that is dead. Instead off these new javascript libraries should their creators not just create seperate components and submit them to exisiting libraries like prototype/scriptaculous to make them more powerfull rather than having lots of different javascript framweorks which basically do the same thing? -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
On 19-Apr-06, at 7:32 AM, Hendrik Mans wrote:> On 4/19/06, Larry White <ljw1001@gmail.com> wrote: >> There are some applications i wouldn''t do on Rails (like a >> securities >> trading system) > > May I ask why? NO, this is not supposed to be a "duh, you can do > ANYTHING with Rails, and everybody who says otherwise is stupid!!1!" > type of reply. In fact, I somewhat agree with you, but I recently > realized I don''t even know *why* I feel that way. Is it because > dynamic scripting languages, by being way less chatty than something > like Java, somehow feel more fragile? I seriously wonder. >Hey, as someone who has done web-based trading systems I''d say there is *nothing* stupid about using rails for the front-end. I''ve seen j2ee-based successes and failures as well as perl-based successes and failures. The common theme among the failures has been the attempt to create "one solution to rule them all" while the successes have been more focused on one particular type of trade - i.e. metals or primary bond issues. Your real limiting factors are the back-office systems and legacy databases you may have to integrate with. Your choice of platform will work for or against you here - each situation is different, obviously. In fact, I find it really surprising that we don''t hear stories about rails being snuck into trading situations. I can think of no easier place to get "the business" to sign off non-compliant systems (although my experience has been limited to front-office environments). Regards, Trevor -- Trevor Squires http://somethinglearned.com> - Hendrik > > -- > http://www.mans.de > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
> On another note to the initial post about gridview controls, treeview > etc, scriptaculous has a number of update tickets in for these > controls > which i am glad to see. I have looked at rico and > http://script.spinelz.org/ and while i am impressed with the > examples on > their respective sites i suppose what frightens people off(like my > boss) > is what if work on these open source initiatives slows down or stops > completly then you may be come reliant on something that is dead. >This is very contradictory and I''ll tell you why: open source means you have access to the source, so even if the core developers give up, you still have full access to the source and you can modify it in any way you want. Besides, most of those libraries are maintained by more than one person. One of our customers had to see a commercial software supplier file for bankrupty and losing all support at that point... and no source code whatsoever, as it was closed source. That was back in the old OS 9 days... and then came OS X. They knew OS 9 was eventually going to be discontinued, so again they had to look for new software.> Instead off these new javascript libraries should their creators not > just create seperate components and submit them to exisiting libraries > like prototype/scriptaculous to make them more powerfull rather than > having lots of different javascript framweorks which basically do the > same thing?Rico and script.aculo.us both use prototype. Best regards Peter De Berdt
Hi, I''m currently a new developer on both ASP.Net and RoR.
I''m in the
process of building ASP.Net as part of a contract arrangement but I''m
building the RoR counterpart as a learning exercise with a real
application. Thus, I''m taking notes as I go through this process and I
have
some very interesting findings so far.
ASP.Net
o Pros
- solid IDE with good database integration and debugging
- very good configuration management for role base authentication
- good development framework for building ASP.Net 2.0 applications
- seperate code from HTML/XHTML
- good web project structure
- alot of books of the market but only a few that I would consider
great
(i.e. ASP.Net 2.0 web programming with C# 2005 by Joel Murach and
Anne Boehm)
o Cons
- platform restriction
- supports other databases but it works the best an dprovides better
support for SQL Server
- sparse documentation in regards to deploying your application
from different versions of their IDE (i.e. VS 2005 vs VWD 2005
Express)
- cost associated with their mid-tier tools (i.e. VS 2005 Professional
and SQL Server 2005)
- currently MS is offering free 1 year licence of all the express
tool
- restricted to using the IDE for any reall development
- cannot install SQL Server 2005 Express within VPC and this is an
addtional cost for VPC
with XP w/SP2. However, I was able to get VWD 2005 Express installed
and running but
no SQL Server 2005 Express at this time.
RoR
o Pros
- no financial cost to get up and going with RoR development
- dynamic programming language (i.e. Ruby) that has some of the best
features
functionality of its ancestors
- supports many platforms as well as the major database engines
- execellent project structure for organizing web applications
- can work both within IDE and from the command line
- great people to assist the new RoR developers in coming up to speed
- not many books but the few I have come into contact with are
execellent.
(quality over quantity) For examples, Rails Recipes, Programming
Ruby,
and Agile Web Development with Rails.
o Cons
- availability of RoR IDE with database integration
Note: I see RadRails as being that IDE and I look forward to the
database integration at the
level of Visual Web Developer. 2005 Express. Also, it would
good see blessed plugin
for supporting role based authentication
- not enough of common framework that''s blessed by the core team
and is
a standard part of
rails. There are certain things that one does over and over again and
this needs to be a part
of rails. I know that the team is working hard and we''ll see
these
things in time.
- configuration of standard webservers (i.e. Apache) needs to become
easier to support multiple
applications. Maybe, a configurations manager that one can access
from an IDE tool or from
the command line to configure webservers, authentication, roles,
database provider, and so on.
Well, this is all the information that I have at this time but I''m sure
that
I''ll have additional information
in a month or so where I focus more on productivity.
-Conrad
On 4/19/06, Peter De Berdt <peter.de.berdt@pandora.be>
wrote:>
> > On another note to the initial post about gridview controls, treeview
> > etc, scriptaculous has a number of update tickets in for these
> > controls
> > which i am glad to see. I have looked at rico and
> > http://script.spinelz.org/ and while i am impressed with the
> > examples on
> > their respective sites i suppose what frightens people off(like my
> > boss)
> > is what if work on these open source initiatives slows down or stops
> > completly then you may be come reliant on something that is dead.
> >
>
> This is very contradictory and I''ll tell you why: open source
means
> you have access to the source, so even if the core developers give
> up, you still have full access to the source and you can modify it in
> any way you want. Besides, most of those libraries are maintained by
> more than one person.
> One of our customers had to see a commercial software supplier file
> for bankrupty and losing all support at that point... and no source
> code whatsoever, as it was closed source. That was back in the old OS
> 9 days... and then came OS X. They knew OS 9 was eventually going to
> be discontinued, so again they had to look for new software.
>
> > Instead off these new javascript libraries should their creators not
> > just create seperate components and submit them to exisiting libraries
> > like prototype/scriptaculous to make them more powerfull rather than
> > having lots of different javascript framweorks which basically do the
> > same thing?
>
> Rico and script.aculo.us both use prototype.
>
> Best regards
>
> Peter De Berdt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>
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I would say the main thing is programmer productivity. Time is money, Rails saves both. Actually that was pretty good. You know what, if you need to make a presentation in Powerpoint to sell this to somebody, do two slides in a row like this: Slide 1 Time is money Slide 2 Rails saves both Anyway, your other questions: TextMate is the preferred alternative to RadRails for many Rails developers. The availability of treeview and gridview out-the-box stuff: I honestly haven''t heard of such a thing, although I do know there''s an excellent graphing package which Geoffrey Grosenbach presented on at Canada on Rails and which if I remember correctly he also wrote. -- Giles Bowkett http://www.gilesgoatboy.org On 4/19/06, Johnny B <johnnybutler7@gmail.com> wrote:> Our company is mainly made up off application developers but we have a > lot of web work coming up so we are deciding which route to take at the > moment. We initially identfied ASP.NET 2.0 with the ATLAS AJAX > framework because of the RAD features, easy to learn etc. > > I had read some stuff on ROR and our Boss who is open minded allowed me > to create a sample application with ROR. He was impressed with how > quickly i picked it up and we are already practicing TDD/MVC/Agile > development which makes it more enjoyable to program ROR rather than in > ASP.NET it can seem your configuring wizards rather than meaningfull > programming. We were really impressed with how easy it was to use AJAX > and the RJS stuff is really powerfull. > > Basically if we can put a proposal together as to why ROR is a real > alternative then he will step up or ROR development/training and we will > use it for some of the web projects we have lined up. Can anyone point > me in the right direction as to links stating the advantages of ROR?, > who''s using it?, any sites out there with it at the moment?. > > I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed > of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself. Do > the javascript Libraries in ROR have any widgets similar to ASP.NET''s > gridviews, treeviews etc as the main reason for choosing ASP.NET is > these fancy controls that you can configure with a wizard and ASP.NET > does the rest. > > We already use eclipse so RadRails is a great plug in and is what i used > for ROR development but is there any other IDE''s in the pipeline? > > Any help much appreciated. > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
If java is an option, make sure you post this graphic in your slide: http://www.rubyonrails.com/media/images/blahblah_vs_tada.png I want a poster of that!!! Chris -----Original Message----- From: rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org [mailto:rails-bounces@lists.rubyonrails.org] On Behalf Of Giles Bowkett Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 3:45 PM To: rails@lists.rubyonrails.org Subject: Re: [Rails] Why Ruby on Rails I would say the main thing is programmer productivity. Time is money, Rails saves both. Actually that was pretty good. You know what, if you need to make a presentation in Powerpoint to sell this to somebody, do two slides in a row like this: Slide 1 Time is money Slide 2 Rails saves both Anyway, your other questions: TextMate is the preferred alternative to RadRails for many Rails developers. The availability of treeview and gridview out-the-box stuff: I honestly haven''t heard of such a thing, although I do know there''s an excellent graphing package which Geoffrey Grosenbach presented on at Canada on Rails and which if I remember correctly he also wrote. -- Giles Bowkett http://www.gilesgoatboy.org On 4/19/06, Johnny B <johnnybutler7@gmail.com> wrote:> Our company is mainly made up off application developers but we have a > lot of web work coming up so we are deciding which route to take atthe> moment. We initially identfied ASP.NET 2.0 with the ATLAS AJAX > framework because of the RAD features, easy to learn etc. > > I had read some stuff on ROR and our Boss who is open minded allowedme> to create a sample application with ROR. He was impressed with how > quickly i picked it up and we are already practicing TDD/MVC/Agile > development which makes it more enjoyable to program ROR rather thanin> ASP.NET it can seem your configuring wizards rather than meaningfull > programming. We were really impressed with how easy it was to useAJAX> and the RJS stuff is really powerfull. > > Basically if we can put a proposal together as to why ROR is a real > alternative then he will step up or ROR development/training and wewill> use it for some of the web projects we have lined up. Can anyonepoint> me in the right direction as to links stating the advantages of ROR?, > who''s using it?, any sites out there with it at the moment?. > > I have read the Agile book and stated the obvious adavantages as speed > of development, cheap, easy to learn, TDD/MVC/Agile sells itself. Do > the javascript Libraries in ROR have any widgets similar to ASP.NET''s > gridviews, treeviews etc as the main reason for choosing ASP.NET is > these fancy controls that you can configure with a wizard and ASP.NET > does the rest. > > We already use eclipse so RadRails is a great plug in and is what iused> for ROR development but is there any other IDE''s in the pipeline? > > Any help much appreciated. > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >_______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
I''ve been updating an EJB app after spending a good 6 months in rails and its *very painful.. this pretty much sums it up for me, thanks. Chris Bruce wrote:> If java is an option, make sure you post this graphic in your slide: > > http://www.rubyonrails.com/media/images/blahblah_vs_tada.png > > > I want a poster of that!!! > > > > Chris-- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
The graphing package is called Gruph and i am currently playing with it at the moment. The link is below. You must install ImageMagick and RMagick to enable gruff to work. Looks pretty cool from early testing. http://nubyonrails.com/pages/gruff -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Ok, but what about RoR vs. some of the PHP frameworks that are coming up in its wake? http://www.symfony-project.com/ http://cakephp.org/ http://seagullproject.org/ I''ve been tasked with comparing these to RoR. I know RoR, but my 2 coworkers do not. 1 is a PHP genius (and open to RoR) and the other knows PHP but is open to anything. How do I weigh their combined knowledge against having them learn RoR? Are these PHP frameworks almost as good? The documentation aspect is huge, of course. There are no training books or classes (or conferences or seminars) for any of the PHP frameworks. If/when we hire someone new, I would like to be able to hand them a book (AWDwR, etc) if they don''t already know Rails and go from there. With the PHP frameworks, we''ve got nada. Thoughts? Sean On 4/22/06, Johnny B <johnnybutler7@gmail.com> wrote:> The graphing package is called Gruph and i am currently playing with it > at the moment. The link is below. > > You must install ImageMagick and RMagick to enable gruff to work. > > Looks pretty cool from early testing. > > http://nubyonrails.com/pages/gruff > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
Sean Hussey wrote:> Ok, but what about RoR vs. some of the PHP frameworks that are coming > up in its wake?I work in a largely J2EE shop. We have a few *very* monolithic java apps and I *can''t* stand JSP. Now granted, some of it is because of shortcuts programmers have taken (because of time restraints mainly). But, even if you are very careful and refactor, there are decisions that can cause lots of issues (caching and persisted classes and all sorts of crap). We are currently rearchitecting a lot of this stuff to get rid of the boxes that we are in with "nifty" technologies that promised to fix stuff. I may be stretching the issue a *bit*, but it''s still difficult sometimes to do even some normally easy stuff. :: shrug :: I, myself, am pretty good with PHP and my boss is as well. We can easily come up with working applications for various web clients. However, we have *never* successfully been able to deploy a current framework. We''ve tried at least ten of them (two of them "commercial" ones). Not only that, but customers generally don''t like huge, convoluted administration systems. Just consider walking a client through security with PostNuke. :: grin :: While PHP has its place, I''m currently investigating writing a few things in RoR as proof of concept apps. I hope we can move from PHP to RoR. I also don''t put much stock in all the One True CMS stuff. I expect I''m not the only one that has wasted weeks on it. Not that they don''t have their uses, but I''ve been in condition upon condition where a client will state "This is magnificient! But we were in a meeting demoing the softare and the CEO said it needs to be able to do X, Y, and Z". No problem, right? Well, a couple of times the framework nearly *prevented* X and Z, and we had to write around a lot of stuff to implement it. If we had rolled our own we would have known instantly what we could do. I''m with DHH on this and I''ve only been working with RoR for a very short time. We have tried in a full development, client setting the Nuke variations, Drupal, Mambo, and too many others to remember. None of them worked without major hacks. *And* the "framework" which includes login / security usually is either so damn complex that it''s worthless or so rudimentary it''s useless. As I''ve heard many times, with a "CMS" (particularly the PHP ones) you usually get 80% or 120% of what you need. And the extra 10-20% of what you need takes twice as long as rolling your own entire framework would have (and that''s in PHP, imagine the time savings with RoR). Instead, our solution was to have about three core frameworks with PHP ranging from simple to complex and mostly having to do with the security systems. Then we can start off with core code that we know (stored in a code repository, of course). We can select the one that makes the most sense for the project and build upon it. I figure we''ll do a similar thing if we move to RoR. It really would take a minimal amount of time to do in RoR. The PHP versions have taken a while to perfect...but it works better than any framework out there for us. Remeber, clients don''t want to hear, "well we''ll see what we can do". They hear "they don''t know what they and their software are doing". That loses you business. With RoR, you don''t have to hack a framework to make it work right. You can take a week and have nearly the exact stuff they want to demo it. :: shrug :: It just works... That doesn''t mean it''s always easy... But we didn''t become programmers for an easy job. :) Bottom Line: My clients have been *extremely* impressed with "Hey, do you have a couple of minutes to pull up the staging site and walk through those changes we had discussed this morning?" They are used to hearing "Sure, we''ll have it tomorrow, or the next day... We''ll give you a call then." -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Wow, what a fantastic writeup. Thank you! My boss has made it official--a coworker and I will be looking at 4 different frameworks to determine which one we will adopt going forward: http://www.rubyonrails.com/ (well, duh) http://www.symfony-project.com/ http://cakephp.org/ http://seagullproject.org/ There are a lot of similar things about a lot of these, but one advantage to Rails I''m looking forward to promoting is Ruby, which we can use to replace Perl as our scripting language. You can''t use PHP as a shell scripting language. Plus, I write a lot of scripts outside of the web-based environment of Rails apps that handle data input and cleanup through ActiveRecord. That''s a huge plus in favor of Ruby and Rails! Sean On 4/22/06, Curtis Spendlove <cuspendlove@gmail.com> wrote:> Sean Hussey wrote: > > Ok, but what about RoR vs. some of the PHP frameworks that are coming > > up in its wake? > > I work in a largely J2EE shop. We have a few *very* monolithic java > apps and I *can''t* stand JSP. Now granted, some of it is because of > shortcuts programmers have taken (because of time restraints mainly). > But, even if you are very careful and refactor, there are decisions that > can cause lots of issues (caching and persisted classes and all sorts of > crap). We are currently rearchitecting a lot of this stuff to get rid > of the boxes that we are in with "nifty" technologies that promised to > fix stuff. I may be stretching the issue a *bit*, but it''s still > difficult sometimes to do even some normally easy stuff. :: shrug :: > > I, myself, am pretty good with PHP and my boss is as well. We can > easily come up with working applications for various web clients. > However, we have *never* successfully been able to deploy a current > framework. We''ve tried at least ten of them (two of them "commercial" > ones). Not only that, but customers generally don''t like huge, > convoluted administration systems. Just consider walking a client > through security with PostNuke. :: grin :: > > While PHP has its place, I''m currently investigating writing a few > things in RoR as proof of concept apps. I hope we can move from PHP to > RoR. > > I also don''t put much stock in all the One True CMS stuff. I expect I''m > not the only one that has wasted weeks on it. Not that they don''t have > their uses, but I''ve been in condition upon condition where a client > will state "This is magnificient! But we were in a meeting demoing the > softare and the CEO said it needs to be able to do X, Y, and Z". No > problem, right? Well, a couple of times the framework nearly > *prevented* X and Z, and we had to write around a lot of stuff to > implement it. If we had rolled our own we would have known instantly > what we could do. I''m with DHH on this and I''ve only been working with > RoR for a very short time. > > We have tried in a full development, client setting the Nuke variations, > Drupal, Mambo, and too many others to remember. None of them worked > without major hacks. *And* the "framework" which includes login / > security usually is either so damn complex that it''s worthless or so > rudimentary it''s useless. As I''ve heard many times, with a "CMS" > (particularly the PHP ones) you usually get 80% or 120% of what you > need. And the extra 10-20% of what you need takes twice as long as > rolling your own entire framework would have (and that''s in PHP, imagine > the time savings with RoR). > > Instead, our solution was to have about three core frameworks with PHP > ranging from simple to complex and mostly having to do with the security > systems. Then we can start off with core code that we know (stored in a > code repository, of course). We can select the one that makes the most > sense for the project and build upon it. I figure we''ll do a similar > thing if we move to RoR. It really would take a minimal amount of time > to do in RoR. The PHP versions have taken a while to perfect...but it > works better than any framework out there for us. > > Remeber, clients don''t want to hear, "well we''ll see what we can do". > They hear "they don''t know what they and their software are doing". > That loses you business. With RoR, you don''t have to hack a framework > to make it work right. You can take a week and have nearly the exact > stuff they want to demo it. :: shrug :: It just works... That doesn''t > mean it''s always easy... But we didn''t become programmers for an easy > job. :) > > Bottom Line: My clients have been *extremely* impressed with "Hey, do > you have a couple of minutes to pull up the staging site and walk > through those changes we had discussed this morning?" They are used to > hearing "Sure, we''ll have it tomorrow, or the next day... We''ll give > you a call then." > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
Sean Hussey wrote:> You can''t use PHP as a shell scripting language.This isn''t strictly true... PHP has a command line interpreter and PHP has pass thru calls to most any system call (using system() or exec() if nothing else). However, your point still stands, that PHP is intended as a web-page scripting language... which has always been it''s biggest flaw imho. I would very much like to see Ruby replace PHP for web scripting and Perl for system scripting. Don''t know if I''d go so far as to threaten bash though... b
Actually, we''ve all made a huge error in not making the web browser language (now JavaScript) the same as the web server language (too numerous to mention). It really isn''t right to make people use two different languages for similar things. I understand the Netscape server made a stab at using JavaScript on the server, once. So the right answer, of course, is replacing JavaScript with ruby in the browser but my hunch is that might not happen soon. And, hypocritically, I won''t give up ruby on the server, either. Warren Seltzer
Warren, this ultimate environment that you speak of exists today. You can use VBScript in the browser (IE only) and VB on the server (Windows only). It just isn''t the language of choice :-) On 4/29/06, Warren Seltzer <warrens@actcom.net.il> wrote:> Actually, we''ve all made a huge error in not making the web browser language (now > JavaScript) the same as the web server language (too numerous to mention). It really > isn''t right to make people use two different languages for similar things. > > I understand the Netscape server made a stab at using JavaScript on the server, once. So > the right answer, of course, is replacing JavaScript with ruby in the browser but my hunch > is that might not happen soon. And, hypocritically, I won''t give up ruby on the server, > either. > > Warren Seltzer > > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
On Sat, Apr 29, 2006 at 11:28:15PM -0400, Carl Fyffe wrote: } Warren, this ultimate environment that you speak of exists today. You } can use VBScript in the browser (IE only) and VB on the server } (Windows only). It just isn''t the language of choice :-) Fortunately that isn''t the only way. ASP.NET can use JavaScript as the server language. There is also an Apache module named mod_wxjs <http://users.skynet.be/saw/wxJS/mod_wxjs/index.html> that supports JavaScript in much the way that mod_ruby supports Ruby. In all honesty, JavaScript and Ruby are similar languages. I like Ruby a great deal better due to some additional dynamic power (e.g. const_missing, method_missing, class methods to support DSLs, proper inheritance), but JavaScript isn''t bad. Nonetheless, I''d rather keep JavaScript on the client and Ruby (or a few other languages) on the server. --Greg } On 4/29/06, Warren Seltzer <warrens@actcom.net.il> wrote: } >Actually, we''ve all made a huge error in not making the web browser } >language (now } >JavaScript) the same as the web server language (too numerous to mention). } >It really } >isn''t right to make people use two different languages for similar things. } > } >I understand the Netscape server made a stab at using JavaScript on the } >server, once. So } >the right answer, of course, is replacing JavaScript with ruby in the } >browser but my hunch } >is that might not happen soon. And, hypocritically, I won''t give up ruby } >on the server, } >either. } > } >Warren Seltzer } > } > } >_______________________________________________ } >Rails mailing list } >Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org } >http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails } > } _______________________________________________ } Rails mailing list } Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org } http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails }
There''s also Helma: http://helma.org/ The architecture is written in Java (using the Apache Rhino Javacript engine), but you build your apps entirely in Javascript. And actually, they claim to be the first framework with an ActiveRecord implementation. But if you want to get closer to your Rails experience, you can also try TrimJunction: http://trimpath.com/project/wiki/TrimJunction Be sure to try the demo: http://trimpath.com/demos/nextaction_static1/nextaction.htm Open LiveHTTP headers or TamperData as you click around in that... it''s all happening on the client side! b Gregory Seidman wrote:> On Sat, Apr 29, 2006 at 11:28:15PM -0400, Carl Fyffe wrote: > } Warren, this ultimate environment that you speak of exists today. You > } can use VBScript in the browser (IE only) and VB on the server > } (Windows only). It just isn''t the language of choice :-) > > Fortunately that isn''t the only way. ASP.NET can use JavaScript as the > server language. There is also an Apache module named mod_wxjs > <http://users.skynet.be/saw/wxJS/mod_wxjs/index.html> that supports > JavaScript in much the way that mod_ruby supports Ruby. > > In all honesty, JavaScript and Ruby are similar languages. I like Ruby a > great deal better due to some additional dynamic power (e.g. const_missing, > method_missing, class methods to support DSLs, proper inheritance), but > JavaScript isn''t bad. Nonetheless, I''d rather keep JavaScript on the client > and Ruby (or a few other languages) on the server. > > --Greg > > } On 4/29/06, Warren Seltzer <warrens@actcom.net.il> wrote: > } >Actually, we''ve all made a huge error in not making the web browser > } >language (now > } >JavaScript) the same as the web server language (too numerous to mention). > } >It really > } >isn''t right to make people use two different languages for similar things. > } > > } >I understand the Netscape server made a stab at using JavaScript on the > } >server, once. So > } >the right answer, of course, is replacing JavaScript with ruby in the > } >browser but my hunch > } >is that might not happen soon. And, hypocritically, I won''t give up ruby > } >on the server, > } >either. > } > > } >Warren Seltzer > } > > } > > } >_______________________________________________ > } >Rails mailing list > } >Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > } >http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > } > > } _______________________________________________ > } Rails mailing list > } Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > } http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails > } > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails