Camping vs. Sinatra | Hacker News Reader

Camping vs. Sinatra

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61 pointsrazerbeans19 comments

Always had a soft spot for Camping. Any web framework whose code comes in around 4k or under gets the thumbs up from me!

* Current code @ 3.499k - http://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/lib/camping.rb

* Last WayBackMachine archive of _why repo @ 3.9k - http://web.archive.org/web/20080527003153/code.whytheluckyst...

Very lively note! No wonder this fellow was drawn to working an on a project by _why.

I've never before felt interested in using a Ruby framework, having recoiled from Rails in consternation (though to be fair, I wasn't quite ready for a framework). I really like the idea of a mnmlst framework. I've looked at the Sinatra and camping websites before... now I'm intrigued enough to try a project in each.

He's not kidding about the small community increasing the likelihood that your problem gets looked at. I once had a small issue, and _why himself responded to my e-mails until I had figured it out.

Sure.. but _why kinda up and disappeared, didn't he....

Yes but Camping was already a community project (quite a while) before _why disappeared.

(Disclaimer: I wrote that email)

Oh, don't worry. I know what every single byte in Camping does:

    $ git-rank-contributors -v | head -n 5
    _why <why@whytheluckystiff.net>: 11384 lines of diff
    Magnus Holm <judofyr@gmail.com>: 10122 lines of diff
    Jonas Pfenniger <zimbatm@oree.ch>: 1829 lines of diff
    Manfred Stienstra <manfred@gmail.com>: 168 lines of diff
    Sean Busbey <sean.busbey@gmail.com>: 116 lines of diff

Besides, there's plenty of other (techarch, Bluebie, DaveEveritt, zuk and busbey are the first who come to my mind) who post frequently on the mailing list and know plenty about Camping.

At 4k, it's not exactly huge. It is full of ruby that isn't exactly obvious at once, which I actually think is kind of enlightening.

I'm a big fan of how well demonstrated the code was in this email.

It's things like this email that make the Ruby community sparkly and tantalizing for all of us.

This seems a little weird to me. Like if I bought a Pepsi and someone from Coca-cola came up: "Pepsi, huh? Great choice! That stuff tastes pretty good, doesn't it? And that's the important thing. But you know, there are some pretty cool things about Coca-cola..." The opening enthusiasm sounds forced, like it's to gain my trust and set me up for a conversion. Not saying that's what's intended, just how it feels to me.

Is there some backstory I'm missing?

Finally someone who wasn't blinded by the creativity/stupidity of the last part of the email; ten points for Gryffindor!

The goal of this post wasn't to convince you to switch to Camping, but to inform people that Camping is still alive and there are places where it's actually better than Sinatra. The problem is that people have misconceptions about Camping: old, ugly, not maintained (because why left), small community. While I don't care what framework you use, you should at least be aware of the current status of Camping before making a decision. It's more like: "But you know, there are some pretty cool things about Coca-Cola since you last tasted it four years ago".

As for the writing style: I blame my Norwegian heritage and that English isn't my mother tongue. One time in the future though…

The backstory is that I'm gearing up for a 1.0 release of Hackety Hack on Whyday, and while the current site is in Rails, I want the _entire_ project to be exemplary for learning. So I posted a thread entitled Camping or Sinatra? where I asked everyone for their opinions... and I decided Sinatra, because I know it best, and because of a few concerns this email addresses. Then this thread comes along.

Is expressing your message as a valid ruby program the new YAPH signature?

His arguments are all valid for programs of a more significant size, but aren't both Camping and Sinatra oriented towards small programs, whereas you'd use something like Rails or Ramaze for bigger projects? This line gets a bit muddied by the increasing number of projects built on Sinatra, although I don't know whether they introduce ways to alleviate the points he made.

I assume you mean JAPH?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_another_Perl_hacker

I stand corrected. It's been a while…

Yep acronyms are a PITA :)

The new JAPH signature? I don't know really. I just write, and sometimes weird stuff ends up on the screen. Sorry!

Let me remind you that it was just six (unimpressive) reasons Camping is better than you would imagine, not six reasons Camping is a better fit for your project. All I'm saying is that Camping gets so many things right. Not necessarily in very few lines of code or very fast, but nonetheless: I look at Camping code and nod to myself: "Yeah, this is probably the correct way to do it".

Of course, this doesn't matter at all! If we cared about correctness, we would program in Haskell, not some language where monkey patching is acceptable in production code. As long as you're comfortable in Sinatra, you should continue doing that. It's that simply.

Interestingly, camping.rb on the other hand is not very pretty or correct: http://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/lib/camping.rb, and that's also what makes it so beautiful in my opinion.

Oh well, let me finish with a little quote from _why:

    On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 02:47:39PM +0200, zimbatm wrote:
    > This is not that hard to do. Maybe I should add some shortening tricks 
    > document. I propose platterizing to be done only before release.

    No, let's not have rules.  I don't feel comfortable with having
    coding standards or any protocol on Camping.  The point of Camping
    is to have very ugly, tricky code that goes against all the rules that
    people make for "beautiful" code these days.  To show that ugly code
    can do beautiful things, maybe.

    I don't want to demonize anyone here, I just want to express the
    ideas that make Camping different.  Camping's personality is 80x50.
    It is like the little gears of a watch that are all meshed together
    into a tight little mind-bending machine.  The challenge of Camping
    isn't to figure out how to automate obfuscation.  The challenge is
    to bring new tricks into the code that push Ruby's parser and make
    everyone look twice.
    
    Not all code needs to be a factory, some of it can just be origami.

    _why

> Interestingly, camping.rb on the other hand is not very pretty or correct: http://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/lib/camping.rb, and that's also what makes it so beautiful in my opinion.

I saw a very interesting comparison between Ruby and Python that sounds like this. Basically, it went like this: "Python's core language is very simple and pretty, and Ruby's is very complex and ugly. Yet, the very ugliness that Ruby allows and Python disallows means that the libraries that are created with the languages that are the exact opposite: RSpec is a thing of beauty, and something similar in Python isn't even really possible at the same level. So I actually like _using_ Ruby, even if I like the Python language more."

Like you said in both your email and here, it's all about what's best for _you_, not what's best 'in absolute.'

My suggestion: make a simple app in both. Try out framework features you want, such as routing, source reloading, view support, testability, modularity (can I use MongoDB instead of a SQL for my models?), low level features, anything else it is important to you. Trying pushing it a little over the edge: extending and metaprogram the core classes as bit and checking error reporting (what happens if I pass out a 10000 character url?).

There you go. Two simple apps, that really stress what matters to you. Also, beware of frameworks that impose too much on you (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1534153).

And most of all: enjoy playing around.

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