Since you’re the experts, maybe you guys can verify this fact for me~
Is it definitely easier and much faster (how fast) to add a database or
major feature into an existing site than if i were programming in PHP?
I am developing a site and may want to add a mail center and user
profile interface next year. For this reason am I better off finding a
programmer who can do it in Ruby? Based on the fact that I may want to
add/change features? Secondly, how many hours or days or weeks would it
generally take a programmer to add a mail center (similar to that of
“myspace’s” mail center) OR something like a user profile database into
an existing site?
to be more clear: a programmer I may hire said that if I went with ruby
i could easily add new features and expand the site. is this really the
case, and should i believe a Ruby programmer when he says it would take
50-80 hours to simply add a new feature here and there?.. or are these
database fields relatively quick and easy to add (10-20 hours) into an
existing site once the framework/foundation is built?
Just trying to find out where time is actually saved and the speed of
development increased with Ruby… because based on talking with this
programmer, it sounds like time is of no essence.
First off your questions are very subjective. What I mean by this is
that there are many, many variables that affect how long it takes to
develop software. For example, it would take a programmer,
significantly, longer to add a backing database to a web site if he
had no pre-built tools to work with.
It’s completely unfair to compare PHP, alone, against Ruby on Rails.
There are frameworks written in PHP that are similar to Rails in that
they provide the web framework.
I have only been working with Ruby on Rails for a short time. I come
from a Java background. I’ve been writing web applications in Java
using the WebObjects development framework for around 6 years or so.
Although I really like Java and WebObjects for building web sites, I
find it pure joy to work in Ruby on Rails.
I love Ruby as a programming language, and Rails is one of the
greatest web frameworks I’ve ever encountered. Now here’s the tricky
part: as of today, I can build sites faster in WebObjects than I can
in Ruby on Rails. You ask, “Why is that?” The simple answer is that I
know WebObjects inside-and-out. I don’t have to pause for long
periods of time to learn how to do something in Rails that comes
naturally to me in WebObjects.
So then why my interest in Rails? This is also easy to answer. The
things that I “have” learned about Ruby and Rails make it much easier
for me to accomplish those tasks than building the same solution in
Java and WebObjects.
The reason for this has a lot to do with the fact that Ruby on Rails
has many of the best-practice methodologies “baked” into the
foundations of the framework. Things like convention over
configuration, automatic object-relational mapping, strong focus on
agile programming techniques, test driven methodologies, and REST
baked into the framework.
Ruby on Rails has an elegance that is unmatched by any other language/
framework I’ve ever work with. This elegance helps keep a programmer
focused on what makes the application unique and useful to the
customer. This results in a highly maintainable code base. Such code
bases are naturally easier to extend to add new functionality.
Here are a few links that I hope you will find useful:
they provide the web framework.
in Ruby on Rails. You ask, “Why is that?” The simple answer is that I
has many of the best-practice methodologies “baked” into the
Is it definitely easier and much faster (how fast) to add a database or
to be more clear: a programmer I may hire said that if I went with ruby
Thanks for any response!
