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Ruby on Rails

Mark Goodge

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Anyone here using Ruby on Rails, either in a real live application or
just for development/playing around?

Mark
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk Photos: http://www.goodge.co.uk
"A sky isn't always blue, a sun doesn't always shine. It's alright to fall apart sometimes"

Andy Dingley

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Mark Goodge wrote:
> Anyone here using Ruby on Rails,

No - I really don't get what the excitement is.

Ruby is OK, but dynamically typed languages are flavour of the month
right now and Python seems better on all counts. I'm getting interested
in Groovy too though, because I'm primarliy a Java hack.

Rails leaves me cold. Either I'm missing something or it's all about
banging out single-record CRUD apps with minimum effort, then it falls
flat on anything the slightest bit more complicated. I don't have a
problem doing the easy stuff, I need help with the hard ones!

Karl Groves

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote in
news:vm9kl2ppraia7bcbkg46s49s4rmrrvpoge@news.markshouse.net:

> Anyone here using Ruby on Rails, either in a real live application or
> just for development/playing around?
>

Since I have *zero* experience with RoR, take what I say with the grain of
salt it deserves.

I don't really see what's so amazing about RoR. From what I've seen, and as
Andy said in his reply, it looks like little more than a buncha premade
goodies - going beyond which sort of eliminates RoR's attractiveness.

At that point, I don't see the return on my time to learn a new language.
I consider myself an intermediate with PHP as it is, so investing time to
learn something else is investing time I could become better with PHP,
particularly when you consider all the new OOP functionality in PHP5.

And, as far as having a framework to work from, I have CakePHP, Zend
Framework, etc. to go to.

I say "meh".

--
Karl Groves
www.karlcore.com

Mark Goodge

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

On 14 Nov 2006 13:29:05 -0800, Andy Dingley put finger to keyboard and
typed:

>
>Mark Goodge wrote:
>
>No - I really don't get what the excitement is.
>
>Ruby is OK, but dynamically typed languages are flavour of the month
>right now and Python seems better on all counts. I'm getting interested
>in Groovy too though, because I'm primarliy a Java hack.

I've never liked Python, but Ruby seems to have a lot of its
advantages without some of the more annoying disadvantages.

>Rails leaves me cold. Either I'm missing something or it's all about
>banging out single-record CRUD apps with minimum effort, then it falls
>flat on anything the slightest bit more complicated. I don't have a
>problem doing the easy stuff, I need help with the hard ones!

Well, Rails does have some really cool stuff built in which does make
the creation of a dynamically-generated site very easy. The downside
is that it makes doing the more complex stuff even more complex, as
you have to write your own handlers for it.

What I'm trying to get a feel for is whether it's likely to be the
next big thing or not. At the moment, the most common open source
tools for building dynamically-generated sites are PHP on Apache and
Linux with a mysql backend. But PHP has its own problems and is
primarily a procedure-oriented langauge - you can do object-oriented
PHP, but that's not how most people learn it and PHP doesn't make it
easy. With OO being touted as the future of programming, an open
source OO scripting language on a framework that's intended to make
creating database-driven sites simple and reliable could, at least
theoretically, have a big impact. But that depends a lot on whether
reality follows the hype - and that's the debatable part!

Mark
--
Visit: http://names.orangehedgehog.com - British surname distribution profiles
"All the promises we break from the cradle to the grave"

William Tasso

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Fleeing from the madness of the The Good Stuff Company of the UK jungle
Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> stumbled into
news:alt.www.webmaster,uk.net.web.authoring
and said:

> ...
> With OO being touted as the future of programming ...

Can I just check? is that 'again' or 'still'?

/just a wonderin'

--
William Tasso

http://williamtasso.com/words/what-is-usenet.asp

Toby Inkster

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Mark Goodge wrote:

> With OO being touted as the future of programming

OO has been touted as the future of programming since the 1970s, but
there's still been plenty of money in procedural programming in the
intervening 30 years.

Ruby on Rails will probably become quite a big and popular web
development platform, and it will probably gain a status roughly
equal to ASP+Access or LAMP (take your pick on which "P"), but I
can't imagine it replacing any of them any time soon.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jamie

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

In <ueekl2h42ebdvsp2g9jagk4nffapas6ovv@news.markshouse.net>,
Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> mentions:
>Well, Rails does have some really cool stuff built in which does make
>the creation of a dynamically-generated site very easy. The downside
>is that it makes doing the more complex stuff even more complex, as
>you have to write your own handlers for it.

I looked into ruby, VERY briefly.. so far I've turned away from it,
but I may delve into it again at some point, mainly for buzzword
compliance and to remain "hip". Ideally, everything-is-an-object
is a good idea, but.. for numbers and primitives, I wasn't crazy
about the idea.

>What I'm trying to get a feel for is whether it's likely to be the
>next big thing or not. At the moment, the most common open source
>tools for building dynamically-generated sites are PHP on Apache and
>Linux with a mysql backend.

That would be the advantage as I see it. There is an awful lot of
hype behind ruby, you can tell that they have some excellent PR
people working in their camp.

>But PHP has its own problems and is
>primarily a procedure-oriented langauge - you can do object-oriented
>PHP, but that's not how most people learn it and PHP doesn't make it
>easy.

I use PHP all the time.. but.. you're right it does have it's own
problems. PHP 5.1 is pretty good at OO stuff, but.. with PHP
you will forever be stuck at the mercy of a zillion different ISP
settings, each host having a bit different setup. Nowadays I see
they've taken to compiling PHP without POSIX support. To make
matters more "interesting" PHP features random segfaults depending
on which version you're using. (particularly in dealing with
references)

>With OO being touted as the future of programming, an open
>source OO scripting language on a framework that's intended to make
>creating database-driven sites simple and reliable could, at least
>theoretically, have a big impact. But that depends a lot on whether
>reality follows the hype - and that's the debatable part!

I've always felt that for frameworks, you should design your own,
or at least start with an existing *small* framework and build
up on it, being careful to understand how/why it does what it does,
ripping out the parts you don't need, etc.. I realize that sounds
backwards, but getting stuck trying to work out how this or that
does-what-it-does is no fun when the "framework" is huge.

Here's my "fun" little blurb on the subject of frameworks (MVC in specific):

http://weird.podro.com/gouf/art/mod...olers_take_two/

I myself happen to like perl, so, that is the language I used for the example.
(perl is pretty good, but not so popular these days) I think it's perfectly OK
to reinvent the wheel sometimes, or, to chomp bits out of the wheel that you
don't need. (I've found it's a lot easier to add code than it is to remove it)
I'm a bit of a humbug on huge frameworks.

Based on what I've seen, the compelling reason for using ruby is
the same as PHP... everyone else is doing it, it has some excellent
PR behind it, I imagine many more will follow.

Jamie
--
http://www.geniegate.com Custom web programming
guhzo_42@lnubb.pbz (rot13) User Management Solutions

John Bokma

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

nospam@geniegate.com (Jamie) wrote:

> Based on what I've seen, the compelling reason for using ruby is
> the same as PHP... everyone else is doing it, it has some excellent
> PR behind it, I imagine many more will follow.

Yup, don't be amazed if Ruby does to PHP what PHP did to Perl, only this
time I guess (because I have very little knowledge about Ruby, but what
I've seen so far looks cool) the better one wins.

--
John Need help with SEO? Get started with a SEO report of your site:

--> http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

Matt Probert

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:28:57 +0000, Mark Goodge
<usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote:

>Anyone here using Ruby on Rails,

All I can think of is "The Perils of Penelope"...... Showing my age
<g>

Matt

--
Woe to him that willfully innovates, while ignorant of the constant.
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Mark Goodge

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:56:24 -0600, Karl Groves put finger to keyboard
and typed:

>Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote in
>news:vm9kl2ppraia7bcbkg46s49s4rmrrvpoge@news.markshouse.net:
>
>
>Since I have *zero* experience with RoR, take what I say with the grain of
>salt it deserves.
>
>I don't really see what's so amazing about RoR. From what I've seen, and as
>Andy said in his reply, it looks like little more than a buncha premade
>goodies - going beyond which sort of eliminates RoR's attractiveness.

That's probably partly true. But I think that the premade goodies are
more than just filler - they're close to being RoR's killer app.

I've just been on a two-day course on RoR (hence my question here!),
prior to which I had zero knowledge of Ruby, zero knowledge of Rails
and very little exposure to OOP (I can read other people's programming
and debug it a bit, but I've never actually written any myself from
scratch). In that sense, I was probably the least experienced person
there (everyone else already seemed to be into OO in a big way).
But... it was so easy to learn! OK, so I didn't get enough into it in
that short a time to hit the hard stuff, and I do have the advantage
of being an experienced PHP and PERL programmer with a working
knowledge of a few others so I'm used to learning programming
languages. However, even with minimal Ruby skills (and it looks like
it's not too complex a language to master), Rails allows you to create
functional database-driven websites very, very quickly indeed. This
means that once it gets "out there", beyond the initial cadre of
enthusiasts, it's likely to get a reputation as being a good choice
for beginners - it does a lot of the hard work for you.

However, that advantage is, IMO, also likely to be the biggest
problem. Because, like PHP, RoR used by a beginner is likely to be
insecure and produce non-standards compliant websites. The sheer ease
of doing some things with RoR also makes it easy to create an app
that's vulnerable to form poisoning, and the fact that it doesn't, by
default, create valid HTML is a major drawback (although that may well
be fixed in future versions). It also makes it rather hard to create
AJAX sites that degrade gracefully when client-side scripting is
turned off. On the other hand, it encourages the separation of
structural and visual markup (it uses CSS by default and makes it hard
to generate deprecated markup), which is a good thing.

>At that point, I don't see the return on my time to learn a new language.

Some would say you should learn a new language every year :-)

Mark
--
Visit: http://names.orangehedgehog.com - British surname distribution profiles
"L'amore giunger, l'amore"

Karl Groves

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote in
news:j0oml25v4r4qajvcp2p223ln9rp50no7c6@news.markshouse.net:

> On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:56:24 -0600, Karl Groves put finger to keyboard
> and typed:

>
> Some would say you should learn a new language every year :-)
>

Well, if I could master a new language a year, on top of dayjob work, side
work, personal projects, 2 kids, a house, 3 dogs, and an auto restoration,
I'd be all about it. As it is, it has taken me about 3 years to get where
I am with PHP. I figure I'm about 9 months before I get strong OO PHP
skills, then I may contemplate a new language. For me, I'm steering toward
Java. I think learning OO in the language I'm familiar with will help me
with an OO language I'm not familiar with. That, and it'll make Andy
Dingley respect me. ;-)

--
Karl Groves
www.karlcore.com

Mark Goodge

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:44:44 -0600, Karl Groves put finger to keyboard
and typed:

> I think learning OO in the language I'm familiar with will help me
>with an OO language I'm not familiar with.

I'm inclined towards the opposite point of view. I've tried learning
OO PHP, but the problem is that I know PHP so well as a procedural
language that it's almost impossible to avoid doing it the way I'm
familiar with. Starting from scratch with a new language, on the other
hand - especially one that's OO by design - means no risk of dropping
back into the old ways.

mark
--
Visit: http://www.ukcommunityradio.info - Community Radio in the UK
"I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now"

Karl Groves

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote in
news:ec1nl2plch0flnio1mrrci8n0ngk7bbeum@news.markshouse.net:

> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:44:44 -0600, Karl Groves put finger to keyboard
> and typed:
>
>
> I'm inclined towards the opposite point of view. I've tried learning
> OO PHP, but the problem is that I know PHP so well as a procedural
> language that it's almost impossible to avoid doing it the way I'm
> familiar with. Starting from scratch with a new language, on the other
> hand - especially one that's OO by design - means no risk of dropping
> back into the old ways.
>
> mark

That's a good point, one I haven't considered. I imagine its also a way to
avoid using OO PHP simply to say I'm doing OO.

--
Karl Groves
www.karlcore.com

Andy Dingley

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Karl Groves wrote:

> I think learning OO in the language I'm familiar with will help me
> with an OO language I'm not familiar with. That, and it'll make Andy
> Dingley respect me. ;-)

Only if it were Lisp or Scheme 8-)

I'm planning to learn Erlang next week...

John Bokma

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:44:44 -0600, Karl Groves put finger to keyboard
> and typed:
>
>
> I'm inclined towards the opposite point of view. I've tried learning
> OO PHP, but the problem is that I know PHP so well as a procedural
> language that it's almost impossible to avoid doing it the way I'm
> familiar with.

I consider that very odd. OO is extremely similar to procedural (if there
is even a difference, I would say: no), you only group stuff together, a
thing you could (and should) do in a non-OO language as well IMO.

Maybe you got stuck into looking at each problem as a bunch of "is a"
relations. Well, "is a" is not that common, stop digging for it. "has a"
does often the trick.

--
John Need help with SEO? Get started with a SEO report of your site:

--> http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

Toby Inkster

2006-11-19, 7:58 pm

John Bokma wrote:

> Maybe you got stuck into looking at each problem as a bunch of "is a"
> relations. Well, "is a" is not that common, stop digging for it. "has a"
> does often the trick.

Yes -- that's something that's always bothered me about OO. Not every
problem easily breaks down in to a bunch of "objects". OO is very good
for simulations of real-life situations, but beyond that it can get
stuck -- in particular I find that websites don't usually fit into an
object-oriented model.

I tend to now create a few objects for, e.g. database connections, page
template ($template=new Template($title, $lang); $template->add_panel($id,
$title, $content); $template->add_body($contentmain);
print $template->output();), and perhaps for users (in a multi-user site
with logins), but for the actual pages, will mostly stick to procedural
programming.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact