Comments on: Ruby-On-Rails or PHP?

By: Marc Uhlig

Marc Uhlig — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:06:26 +0000

I did not say not learning a new language is a good thing, what I said is that I am not falling for the hype, everybody said Rails will revolutionize the web, well, it did not.

Still, I learned it, and I am happy that I did, and it made me write better code, so I gained something, I like learning new things, at the moment I am poking around in Erlang, but, I won’t build a business around a language, and it’s not a language that does revolutionize the web, it is the people.

So, please don’t get me wrong, learning is a good thing, and I am learning new things every day.

By: cag

cag — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:09:46 +0000

“I don’t want to be anal, but I’ll say it anyways: I knew it from the beginning, and it feels good to be right.”

Ah – famous last words – please put this in a frame so you can remember it. Kind of reminds me of when I thought the internet and Java were just fads that would go away – feels so good to know I was right.

Not taking the time to learn a new language is a good thing? I have learned over a dozen new languages and have gained something from everyone of them and yes I have a family, a life, and earned a Master’s degree while working a full time job.

By: Kai Khoy

Kai Khoy — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:59:36 +0000

I am still writing pages in DOS so I’m glad I did not learn PHP or ROR. I’m staying original as can be.

By: Katy

Katy — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 03:50:32 +0000

When I finally got myself into the grove of writing and working with PHP, Ruby came out. And to tell you the truth, the demand from clients to “get it done now” didn’t enable to me to take the time to learn, read, and understand it. Especially when I knew how to accomplish what they needed in PHP without the reading to understand something different. And I couldn’t agree more than most don’t care about the framework, they just want what they need done. “Make it work” so to speak and PHP still does that nicely.

To be honest, now that time has gone by I’m glad I didn’t take the time. It didn’t become the hype and I’m believing more and more that it probably won’t be.

Thanks for the links to the articles, will have to check those out. Great post.

By: Rami Kayyali

Rami Kayyali — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:28:09 +0000

Glad you didn’t fall for hype.

Ten years ago, I used to do all my programming in Perl. I absolutely loved that language, and learning it forced me to learn all sorts irrelevant “languages”. I’ve learned network programming, Windows COM, some assembly, and more. Each with its own weird syntax, and its own quirks. At the end of the day, if you can accomplish what your client is asking for, without a considerable loss of hair, you’re all set. Language zeal is a waste of time.

By: Rob Conery

Rob Conery — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:05:58 +0000

“The customer simply doesn’t care about the technology, all the customer cares about is to get a working product”

Indeed, the marketer speaks . So in fairness my quote was taken out context – that quote was about DHH saying “F*** You” and “I build Rails for ME”. As an OSS leader myself, I understand that it’s actually not about me – it’s about my clients, the developers. Thus the quote.

In terms of “client first” – you and I agree. Sort of…

You can’t stand before a client and tell them “we saved you money with a slower platform”, while their website crashes as they get more successful. Gravatar is the latest in this debacle. If you don’t have a scaling plan, you haven’t given your client a “working product” – you’ve given yourself a shortcut.

Perf isn’t everything… until it’s everything. The Rails guys think it’s just fine to roll the dice – I don’t. I think scaling needs to be considered from day 1.