For a new web project like kijiji, if I want a faster development(the faster the better), which one should I go with? I know some ruby and javascript, but not an elite and never did a project on either of them. Coding is my hobby, not my job. Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.
Express is more along the lines of Sinatra, not Rails. It's much smaller, simpler and to the point than Rails. I don't think it's a fair comparison.
But what the heck, here are my thoughts while I'm here:
The Node community is fast growing, but it's still nowhere near the size or momentum of the Rails community. Overall you'll probably find more help and more kindred spirits with Rails. Node and Express will require more figuring out things on your own.
In my experience, the Rails/Ruby community have much better tools for testing than Node/Express. Hell, they have the best tools for this out of any community I've seen :)
Express is not well documented at all. The guide on their page is a decent start but it's just that. You will find yourself digging through code, obscure blogs and github repos looking for info.
Data access? It's built right into Rails and a core part of it. Express isn't concerned about your data layer at all (again it's more like Sinatra). You will need to decide on what kind of data access/layer you want to go with and see what kind of support Node has for it.
I really like both Rails and Express. But if the project was of any decent size, I'd probably pick Rails myself.
They are both vastly different so it depends on your goals. I suggest Rails as it's more mature and you'll get better community support if you have any issues. Rails's Active Support Core Extensions will also give you a ton of useful helpers which could save you a lot of time developing a web app.
Otherwise just go for the one that interests you the most.
Related
thanks for opening my question :)
I am a university student in Computer Engineering, and I've always done class projects in Java (apart from C, and Assembly, but for very specific things). Apart from that, I have worked for quite a lot of time on a web app done in ActionScript 3, contained in .jsp files and deployed onto a Google App Engine site.
Having that said, I now pretend to do a prototype of another web app, which will have registered users with blogs and a messaging system between them.
My question is, having time as a restraint (I have month and a half), and needing just to build a working prototype, could anyone tell me, in his/her opinion, what would be the best framework for me to start learning and use? (Take into account my Java & ActionScript background) I believe RoR is the most common in these cases, as its easy and quick, but I have no Ruby knowledge at all, and maybe it would be quicker for me to learn Scala (which coming fromJava shouldn't be that different) and Lift, and do it with them instead.
Many thanks in advance!
Pepillo
Last year I found myself in a very similar situation for creating a web based relationship browser for a computing science class. I would highly recommend RoR. Granted you will need to spend some time getting up to speed with Ruby, but it is well worth the small amount of time to learn. There is excellent documentation available and a ton of good tutorials.
Rails can generate much of the core code and database schema with the generator functions in seconds (see scaffolding generators). Considering your time constraint, I think this alone makes rails a good choice.
In terms of learning Ruby, you should not have much trouble with this if you are comfortable with any dynamically typed scripting languages.
Anyway, that has been my experience with rails. Good luck on your project!
I think I'm going with Play! Not only is the easiest for me, as I am a Java guy, but it's also the quickest when in conjuntion with Japid, according to a benchmark I saw.
I used Java for about 7 years now, mostly for web applications, and recently started using RoR. I must say it was really easy to pick up and get started. After only 2 months of working on my own project I started using it for a customer projects and it was far more easier to deliver production code then I had anticipated. So yes I can recommend Ruby and it was not hard at all to pick up.
However, RoR does require a nix platform like apple os or linux. I stated out with windows but there are simply too many drawbacks and bugs.
If you decide to go with ruby I can higly recommend Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers) to get you started.
I'm about to start building a tumblr clone that handles multiple users (so premade clones like Gelato won't cut it) and I'm not sure which framework I'd like to build this is.
Right now, I'm only intending to build a prototype. Something I can get a dozen friends on to test the concept and grow to maybe a couple hundred users to prove the market, so I'm not worried about long term scale. My biggest concern right now is quick deployment. I'd like to get from zero to signups in as short a time as possible, with as little customization to the framework of choice as possible.
I have experience with PHP, but not Ruby. However, I don't think the learning curve would be too steep so I'm not ruling out rails. I just want the framework that is most appropriate for a system like a multi-user tumblr clone so that I can build it with as little hassle, and as quickly, as possible.
If anyone has experience with a similar project, or with these frameworks and can offer an insightful perspective, I'd be very appreciative.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Cheers,
~Jordan Feldstein
Definitely Rails. It'd much faster to develop project like this in Rails.
As far as I saw, PHP is lightyears behind from Rails in ORMs. And Rails routing is much better than any PHP framework's as well.
I have been developing in PHP since 2000, and still have a bunch of PHP systems in production (using both CodeIgniter and CakePHP).
I have found Rails to be incredibly more efficient to develop in ... easily 50% more productivity, depending on the use-case. Faster, higher quality. Easy choice for me.
+1 for Rails.
I can't speak about Codeigniter. My general understanding echoes the above statements. Lightweight and no fully object oriented.
I have developed in CakePHP since Jan 2006, after trying to get Rails deployed on my own server and failing badly. Rails was not easy to deploy back then...at least not for me. At the time Cake was the best alternative, and still is in many ways.
Cake is a very competent framework. However, I agree with the statements that it is in many ways far "behind" Rails. Some features are not as well designed, less integrated or simplified in comparison.
A few months ago I spent a couple of day porting one of my Cake apps to Rails2. Just as an exercise. The learning curve was very shallow for someone like me (with a decent grasp of the concepts that Cake and Rails are built on). We recently started porting one of our apps at work to Rails (also from Cake) because we found that support for a lot of things that are important to us are available in Rails or Ruby but not available or as complete in Cake and PHP.
If you are unsure about switching to Ruby you might want to look at Lithium (previously CakePHP v3). It is PHP 5.3 only and still a good way from 1.0 but the community is active and generally it looks like what Cake might have been if it had been started today and not 2005.
CodeIgniter is very lightweight, which is probably to the detriment of this project if you want to code as little as possible.
CakePHP is pretty much an attempt to port Rails to PHP, so choosing between those two frameworks will depend on other factors.
One factor would be whether you want to learn Ruby or not. I have dabbled in it, and feel it is superior to PHP, but more practical concerns keep me from experimenting with it more (have to use PHP at work).
Another concern would be hosting. I use Dreamhost, and the fee is the same for PHP and Rails. However, a friend of mine just got a GoDaddy hosting account, and he actually has to pay a higher monthly fee to have a Passenger-enabled host.
I've put some of my free time on reading/learning about cakephp but now I'm wondering if will not be better to switch completely to ruby on rails.
Can you give me the good and the bad of those tools, when is about web-development?
many thx
Why switch? Since you've got a head start on CakePHP, take a little break.
Learn some Ruby on Rails for a while, then switch back to CakePHP when the mood strikes you.
That way, in the end, you'll end up knowing two languages/frameworks rather than just one. It's always better to get as much exposure as possible. Each has its benefits and downsides, but why not learn enough to make the decision yourself?
Neither is better than the other. While one may be more suited to particular applications than the other, they are certainly both good frameworks.
PHP is said to be faster, Ruby is objectively a better designed language. These probably make more of a difference than the framework itself - you can always modify the libraries or write your own classes to make the framework do what you want it to.
My advice is to stick with what you know if you are happy with it - learning a new framework is a long process. If you have issues with Cake or you're keen to try something different, Rails is definitely worthwhile.
I recently read a good article from a developer with a CakePHP base who just completed a large Ruby on Rails project.
http://www.jimmycuadra.com/blog/10-from-cake-to-rails
He details where Rails is stronger than Cake but also the other way around. Another blog here compares Ruby and PHP.
http://developingwithstyle.com/articles/2009/06/09/10-reasons-why-ruby-is-better-than-php-reason-5.html
personally i would choose cakephp at this moment. php and mysql are very common on most web hosting packages, even free ones. it is based on php and there is a huge amount of resources to learn and get help from. you can reuse many already written classes.
regarding the speed of cakephp, there are ways how to speed up cakephp in the production environment through the ways you code and caching.
I would choose ruby on rails because
ruby is fun to write
there is a great community
there are more high quality resources like www.railscasts.com and teachmetocode.com
Duplicate: Django or Ruby-On-Rails?
I have been reading on Ruby on Rails, and it seems like on some threads, some users like Django a lot too?
Can someone who have used both give some insight about using them, such as
ease of use
productivity
fun factor
deployment issues
or any other framework you'd highly recommend?
Both are excellent frameworks. Though, I've found Rails to be more suited for the agile developer. For the most part, you'll run some generators to get the files you need as placeholders for your code. Things will work right away, and you just build up from these conventions. It's really flexible and has a large community, lots of innovation and interesting practices are being put into Rails. It's development cycle seems faster paced than Django.
After only touching the surface with Django, it has some interesting differences. As far as I know, you don't get the schema migrations like Rails has out of the box. But you get an extremely simple CRUD mechanism for your models with the extensible admin interface, which is great for testing/managing content. The entire project is documented really well, from the Django Book to the vast amount of information on docs.djangoproject.com.
I personally prefer the Rails way of doing things. But honestly, you need to try them both to see what works for you, and since we're talking about two very good, yet totally different frameworks, it's a tough decision to make either way. So, if you already know Ruby or Python well enough, start with what you know and just go from there. Once you understand how one works, you'll be able to evaluate the smaller differences yourself. Hope that helps.
In my next rails project I'm going to need blogging functionality. I'm wondering whether anyone has any good suggestions, or should I just roll my own? (Probably not in 15 minutes)
I think the most important feature will be to display code samples elegantly.
How's your free time?
Five years, that's how long that little idea took. Plus 2 years of adding bells and whistles. And that, folks, is why I'm giving in and using a blog host. Because I have lots of ideas, lots of things to say and to explore, but only a few dozen years left at best. I can't afford to go chasing every 5-year idea that springs to mind. After due consideration of the crap web frameworks and crap blog packages out there, I decided that I don't want to spend my next 5 years implementing my vision for a decent self-publishing system. Someone else can do it.
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/blog-or-get-off-pot.html
It's a classic build-versus-buy (or, in this case, download for free) decision isn't it?
Write up the feature set of what you are looking for.
Survey the offerings out there to see how close a fit you have.
For the one or two products that is the closest fit, evaluate whether or not it would be less effort to write your own solution or customize the offering to do what you need.
If all you need is a blog site, then this is a no-brainer. Use WordPress and that's it.
If there are other features for this app and blogging is just one of them, then consider writing an app around WordPress. It is just a PHP application using MySql after all.
If WordPress has features or does things that you don't want, then maybe you do need to roll your own.
If the most important feature for this site is that it is to be written in RoR, then roll your own or find a RoR based blogging app as WordPress is not written in RoR. I haven't really done the homework on this but I would imagine that getting PHP and RoR to share session state would be a time consuming hack.
Rolling your own blog is a great project (and quite fun too!), but for practical usage, using something pre-made is going to be more secure, have more cool features, etc. etc. Unless you're incredibly dedicated, you'll probably end up cutting corners and end up with something that isn't quite what you want.
Despite being a Rails guy myself, I'm a huge fan of Wordpress. If you're looking for Rails-based blog engines, I've had luck with Mephisto, although the documentation leaves something to be desired. Radiant CMS is another CMS/Blog system that might be worth looking at.
A lot of Ruby/Rails developers have actually gone the route of using static website/blog generators. This has a few advantages. First, the pages are static HTML with no dependency on a database. This means they can be served by your front-end Web server (Apache, Nginx, etc.) faster than if they were to go through Mongrel, Thin or Phusion Passenger. Secondly, the pages will be easier for search engines to index. Finally, and probably most importantly, you can easily version control your posts using Git (or your favorite SCM)
I switched my blog over to a static model after development on Mephisto seemed to stall. I am using Tom Preston-Werner's Jekyll and Disqus for the comments. Works great. Give it a try!
If you are just looking for a project, then building your own blog engine is a good start.
Personally, though I have been a full-time Rails developer for the past 3 years, I still use and recommend Wordpress for myself and others.
If the project is to write a blog, don't roll your own. There are plenty solutions out there that will solve this problem for you while you worry about pumping out great content.
You will end up spending to much time futzing with the little things that don't really matter.
Probably there are tons of those.
For example, Rastafari, or Enkiblog.
In my next rails project I'm going to
need blogging functionality. I'm
wondering whether anyone has any good
suggestions, or should I just role my
own? (Probably not in 15 minutes)
I wouldn't recommend rolling your own blog system. You should look into using Radiant CMS with a blog extension.
I think the most important feature will be to display code samples elegantly.
For this I can recommend looking into SyntaxHighlighter.
All depends on your goal:
If it is for learning purposes and it's for fun, code it from scratch. Also, try to add new functionality that you will not find in current blogging platforms. For example, make in a way that is easy for a developer to blog tutorials or screencasts.
If it's for a client or just to blog, use wordpress. You can have your site in ruby and then link to wordpress. Think about it, how many human hours are behind wordpress so for you to match that you will need to work full time on it for 8 years.
Wordpress will work out of the box and then periodically you can tweak it, depending on future needs.
I agree, for fun and learning, code from scratch. But consider coding something people really need and don't already have. Innovate.
There are so many excellent blog platforms out there, and some (like Wordpress) have active developer communities writing hundreds of useful and powerful plugins. And that includes some excellent support for code samples.
No need to reinvent the wheel.