I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails (2007) | Hacker News Reader

I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails (2007)

oreillynet.com

22 pointstaytus17 comments

This is an old story. He eventually switched back to Rails [1] : My former company (CD Baby) was one of the first to loudly switch to Ruby on Rails, and then even more loudly switch back to PHP… This book by Michael Hartl came so highly recommended that I had to try it, and the Ruby on Rails Tutorial is what I used to switch back to Rails again… Though I’ve worked my way through many Rails books, this is the one that finally made me “get” it.

Understanding a framework is a long and sometimes tough process. That's the only lesson to be learned.

[1] http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

Can we change the headline to mention that this article was written in 2007? I'm quite sure both PHP and RoR have come a long way in a little over five years.

Please note that this article was written in 2007.

thanks! i didnt realize this!.

He is comapring apples to oranges here.

The language PHP to the _framework_ Rails.

He didn't find the language (ruby) unsuitable, but rather the framework (rails) too heavy. This might of been exactly the same if he tried PHP with Zend/Symphony/etc.

His bottom line should of been: "Sometimes its better to work without a framework".

Or rather just a different framework. I wasn't a Rubyist in 2007, but certainly now Sinatra (especially with Padrino) is worthy of consideration.

If ruby is such an amazing language, why not ditch rails and rewrite it in 2 months with pure ruby ?

Because Ruby isn't designed purely for making websites. You at least need to use Rack (or a similar API) to hook into a server.

PHP has a lot of features built in which make it almost comparable to a framework. This is because it is designed for making websites out of the box, Ruby is not.

And the great cycle begins again...

You can tell this article is old when it reads: "...opened a new empty Subversion respository".

No mud-slinging or hyperbole, just solid reasons why PHP works better for him in this case.

Coding in different languages definitely does make you look at coding from different perspectives, and you can often apply those lessons back to other languages.

This article was on HN 6 months ago. PHP sucks.

How original.

It is comments like this which make me dislike reading the comments of any article with "php" in the title. Not only is it extremely biased, it is presented without any facts or logic to back it up and should be taken as it is given, an opinion.

PHP is an extremely powerful language for building websites and has come along way since it's original release, such as object-orientation, etc.

Admittedly, PHP has many flaws, such as poor error handling (for a newcomer, most veterans in this language know them off by hand and actually find them useful) and poor function naming, some are CamelCase, some are under_scored and some are illegiblyalloneword, but every language has flaws.

This is really the kind of cool-kid attitude which HN doesn't need, it shows a lack of due thought and that you have little to no experience of the language itself, if you had, your comment would have been. "This article was on HN 6 months ago, but, I believe that RoR is better than PHP for these reasons... " and not simple "PHP sucks."

I don't think its really reasonable to say 'X sucks' without taking uses cases into account. While PHP has a number of shortcomings, it is great for things where ruby/rails would be huge waste of time. Build some small brochure websites in rails, and build the same ones in PHP. I bet you'll be done much sooner & deployed more cost effectively using PHP. This might not be the kind of work you aspire to doing, but I think the example still holds.

If you're going to act like a jerk in all your posts, which I actually have no problem with, I'd suggest removing your full name and bio from your HN account 'about' section.

I was actually just reading through his comments now and noted that a few of them had been offensive.

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