Mr. Indecisive makes a decision
Ok. After a long hiatus, I'm back on my web development kick.
And when it comes to web technology, I've been very indecisive.
I'm really tired of looking into every option out there to take on projects with -- ASP.NET, JSP, Rails, Django, Turbogears, Struts, Spring. Whatever.
I'm tired of installing the language of the week. C#. Boo. Ruby. Python. Java. Whatever.
I've decided to simplify and stick with something, and that something is Ruby and Rails. I made it further on Ruby on Rails than any other language and framework this year, so that's what I'm going back to. I also like the up-and-coming nature of Ruby. The Ruby community is kind of like the Python community was about 8-10 years ago... lots of originality, lots of arrogance, lots of potential. When you look around the Python message boards and OSS development for it, it just seems to have stagnated a lot.
I did try using Python, my old standby. I thought I was going to be able to make progress with Python and Django, but I actually made zero progress every time I've sat down to try to do something with it. Python is just not as expressive as a language for this kind of thing as Ruby. It's simpler, that's for sure. And, sorry guys, Django just doesn't hold a candle to Rails. I don't doubt that it's more efficient... I am sure that mod_python allows Django to blow the doors off of most Rails apps running on FastCGI. But getting things working in Rails is much, much easier and the language, though arcane at times, is pretty good. Plus, I already figured out how to extend Rails considerably, so I should just continue with it.
I was able to make progress with .NET. .NET is actually truly excellent for developing web apps, except for one problem: it requires I use Windows. IIS has been rising in usage recently, which has been credited to the .NET framework, but I still don't want to have to do it. Apache is just something I understand how to administrate. MySQL is just something I know how to administrate. Ruby and Rails are easy to understand (except the innerworkings can be somewhat crazy... they use a lot of Ruby tricks)
What does Ruby need? Simple, a far better interpreter. Get it to run on .NET. Get it to run on JVM. Or just make a better VM for it. But you know what, those things will come, and that's why I'm going with it.
For now :)
2 comments:
I'm very interested in why you don't think Django holds a candle to Rails; a lot of people think quite the opposite.
Could you please post specific reasons, so I can refute them individually?
And you're right about Django being more efficient than Rails (and more efficient than TurboGears). We've done some preliminary benchmarks, and the results are astounding.
Could you please post specific reasons, so I can refute them individually?
I didn't really post that remark as flame bait, or something I really want to debate. It's just a personal feeling based on what it takes to get what I want working.
So, no, I won't post individual specific reasons.
Obviously there are pros and cons to both, and I overstated my feeling a bit more than I should have. Either people feel comfortable in one or the other, and I just happen to feel comfortable in the other.
Feel free to wax poetic about why you believe Django is better than Rails. I probably don't have enough info to go on. In my brief experience with Django, my main feeling is that Python and its idiosyncrasies may have been more of the limiting factor towards my happiness with it than Django itself.
Peace.
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