Ah, hell.
When I’m finally getting around to getting some SpinnWebe structure together, it’s a bad time to start reading about Ruby on Rails development.
I like PHP, but it sounds like RoR is pretty cool and easy to program in; but do I stop and take the time to learn it? Or go with what I’ve been working with? I hit this question in various forms in many places in my life, and most of the time I grind to a halt while I delay making a decision.
ugh. Dunno what to do, now.
September 5th, 2006 16:56
I’m not sure I could admit to wanting to use anything called “Ruby on Rails”.
That’s the dumbest name I’ve heard since “DJ Ditty” (Dell’s failed iPod-wannabe).
September 5th, 2006 17:13
Hell, if you really want to bend your brain learning a new language to build your Web site, learn REBOL:
http://rebol.com/
It was designed by a friend of mine. It’s a general-purpose object-based language, but it’s finding some application in Web services.
Schwab
September 5th, 2006 18:29
I’m sort of in the same boat, and I’m leaning towards Ruby. I’m building from the ground-up, and it just feels more intuitive to me than PHP for that sort of thing.
Really, after the whole “holy crap a programming language that you can sprinkle into html” novelty wore off for me, PHP became sort of a bitch to deal with.
If you want to take a half-step backwards, get a load of this: http://perl.apache.org/embperl/
September 5th, 2006 18:33
Ruby is fun and interesting, but it’s not the friendliest language I’ve run into. I think the biggest annoyance is something that perl will happily skip right on over, like:
@foo = split($a)
Perl will generally ignore (unless if you have explicitly undefined $a), versus ruby:
foo = b.split(//)
puts foo # Need to cause ruby to act on b..
-:1: undefined local variable or method `b’ for main:Object (NameError)
Which isn’t a _bad_ thing, but it takes some time getting used to considering that your variables may not always be filled the way you expect them to, or that it may have turned into an array in an object and whoops! Can’t treat it quite like a string. But it does teach diligence.
September 5th, 2006 18:39
(Actually, that isn’t the best of examples - but it’s the sort of thing that Ruby will cause you to ram red hot needles into your eyes with if you treat it like you would throw something out in Perl..)
This is actually something on my mind a bit, though - we’re redoing our major software system at work in the next few quarters, and one of the discussions is whether to continue using Perl - we all know and love it, but it has limitations and is starting to feel creaky, or ruby, which is the fast new hotness that none of us know too well.
September 6th, 2006 01:26
I guess programming Java deploying in JBoss/J2EE and JSP with embedded Tomcat is right out. ;)
It would be overkill, but you’d learn a lot of marketable skills. :)
September 6th, 2006 08:54
Dammit, people, whatever happened to HyperTalk?
September 7th, 2006 10:12
Using Ruby puts the fun back in programming. You’d be amazed just how elegant it is.
September 7th, 2006 11:55
Well, if you want my opinion (and why you’d want it is beyond me)…
For the site, stick with what you’re good at. If you decide to change languages later on that’s fine, but if you make this your first attempt at RoR (or any language) you’re going to put off any future upgrades because the code you’ve have to change is crap.
Once you’ve got everything cleaned up and relaunched start working on RoR stuff, either as smaller projects or as temporary things that you don’t really care about. That way if you need to wipe something out it’s no big loss and the site still runs like normal. When you’re confident that you’ve got RoR figured out, that’s a good time to re-do the site.
I know how fun it is to try to remake everything in the new language you just started learning, but in the long run it pretty much sucks. My website was my first PHP project 5.5 years ago and I’m still running my old, craptastic programming because I don’t want to dick around with trying to make changes while having it continue to work. Eventually I’ll just have to blow it all up and start over, but that ain’t happening any time soon.
September 11th, 2006 09:09
People in the know swear by Egg On Two Wheels.
September 11th, 2006 17:16
Sounds too much like a friggin’ Country and Western song.
Stick with PHP and get the damn thing back up already; I neeeeeed my captions FIX!!!!