What do you think about Ruby on Rails?

[Matias]

I'm not asking if it's better or not than php... I want to know the
opinions of web developers about this new toy...

Byee..

[Dikkie Dik]

I only once saw somebody using it and demonstrating it.

- The fact that it relies heavily on conventions could be a real
drawback if you want to get existing applications (with existing
databases) on rails. But not an unsolvable problem, I think.

- The fact that unit tests are built in makes it the first _serious_
development framework I know. I'm glad to get rid of the feeling that I
am the only one who knows what unit tests are.

- As a complete ruby novice, it was a bit hard to follow. I think the
conventions will require much learning and it will take some time before
you know where you can insert your own code. I think it _looks_ easy. It
may suffer from an "ASP" like appearance: it can look like childplay,
but it still requires a real programmer.

- My impression: a good package to know, even if you are not a ruby
programmer. You can learn enough from the ideas behind it.

Best regards.

Matias wrote:

I'm not asking if it's better or not than php... I want to know the
opinions of web developers about this new toy...

Byee..

[Sean]

I have been using ruby on rails for some testing purposes now. Simply
learning ruby, and the ruby on rails framework.

Ruby is an excellent language, its fully OO, its incredibly intuitive
and I was up and writing some small scripting in next to no time.

Ruby on rails is really an MVC framework for designing websites. For
those with a background in Jakarta should feel right at home here. The
strange thing about ruby on rails is that I am actually enjoying
working with it. I have my complaints about it, but when it says you
can code DB driven sites with less code they really mean it! If you
start off with a tutorial for ruby on rails the amount of functionality
to can have with 2 or 3 lines of code is staggering.

If you are looking for a php alternative try Cake.

[Meião]

I've been trying to switch to ruby. Since I'm the only PHP coder here
at work.
The ruby language is really nice to program since I like smalltalk very
much.
What I dont like in Smalltalk is the enviroments (never tried GNU ST)
But ruby gives me everything from smalltalk in a language easy o use
like perl (or python or PHP).

About Rails, I made (well, it made) an interface to a DB in 1 line.
OK it is just a form to insert values and one navigator, but still 1
line.
As soon as I can I'm switching to Rails.

[A. Timurhan Cevik]

Ruby on rails is cool, with all that action classes and such, but
besides integrated unit tests, really, I havent seen that its much of
an improvement from struts.

The framework is based on struts, the advantage is, scripts running to
give you a complete ready folders and files and stuff ready to be
programmed, if you follow the guidelines of the makers. If you don't,
it is not as quick as mentioned, you have to write code that takes
time. And, the structure they have thought of, may not be the answer to
all of your questions.

As the pattern it uses, the active record pattern mentioned in fowler's
Patterns of Enterprise Application Development (if I remember the book
title correctly) is indeed is not a good pattern, for good OO
programming, as the business structure is very much based on the
database structure, and in Ruby on rails presentation depends on it
too, if not mistaken. What does that mean, really? Whats the deal,
drawback ? You cannot customize your database tables after you have
written the application, the change is difficult, as far as I remember,
and who has been around writing code should know that change is
inevitable and can really be painful.

What's more, the developer who developed rails, in his introduction
video, mentions ruby as being an ideal language for such a framework,
that he tried php to build it then met ruby and started with it.

Ruby is too dynamic, and thats what he sees as an advantage, but is not
in my opinion. Being able to mess with class structure on runtime could
be easy to start developing with, but with serious applications whose
components are meant to be reused or changed later on, you really do
not have any path to follow, you can do everything, and believe me,
being able to do everything in some framework is much too dangerous,
cause if you start modifying someone's code, or your own code after
some time, you will notice that you really need some path to follow.
Some encapsulation, that hides some details from you, some interfaces
that you interact with the object with. If you can alter everything,
that means to me that I will not know what to alter, until I
investigate the whole code.

So, although I even think that php is lacking some properties regarding
encapsulation and low cohesion, I prefer some framework built on php on
this subject.

Summing up, ruby on rails is really a nice framework, but you should
choose carefully whether to implement or not, and you should see the
consequences and act accordingly, draw some path, for the development
team or yourself to follow, such as writing serious documentation and
such. Unit test integration is really cool. Regarding frameworks, I do
prefer struts currently, and looking for a better one continiously. I
havent met a framework that hit me at first sight for php, I had hopes
for ruby as it did really, but after investigating further, my
enthusiasm faded.

[Matias]

Matias escribió:

I'm not asking if it's better or not than php... I want to know the
opinions of web developers about this new toy...

Byee..

Well... I've spent a couple of days learning it, and I think that it has
a big future...

Waht I most like about it, is that it's fully OO, and that you have
nearly all that you need in a single package: Templates, OOR mapping,
Unit tests, MVC Famework... etc..

My problem whit many languages/framework, for example php (what I like
very much anyway) is that you have to learn PHP, then Smarty, Then
EZDBO, then an MVC Framework, then..,then,,,,then,,,,