Relative power of Rails vs C#

Rails
1

Hello,

We have a quality, but farily small, rails backed site running that I
developed last summer. The site is currently in our svn repo, and we
use capistrano to deploy to our linux based web server. The site is
rock solid, and the development effort was moderate. In fact, it was
actually a pleasure to build.

Now, we want to build a much larger site, both in terms of
capabilities of the site and the number of users. We have some
consultants recommending C# as the dev language of choice, a language
and dev environment with which I am not familiar. Can anyone comment
on the relative power of Rails vs C#? Anyone know of any feature
comparisons?

I’m sure this site will need more than one developer for the initial
build. However, there is some concern here over whether Rails
developers are available. Is there a ready market for Rails
developers?

Thank you.

Regards,
Rich

2

theduz wrote:

We have a quality, but farily small, rails backed site running that I
developed last summer. The site is currently in our svn repo, and we
use capistrano to deploy to our linux based web server. The site is
rock solid, and the development effort was moderate. In fact, it was
actually a pleasure to build.

That’s a good sign - the pleasure part.

Now, we want to build a much larger site, both in terms of
capabilities of the site and the number of users. We have some
consultants recommending C# as the dev language of choice, a language
and dev environment with which I am not familiar. Can anyone comment
on the relative power of Rails vs C#? Anyone know of any feature
comparisons?

They are reciting MS’s FUD doctrines - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. So
if MS is big, then their products must be scalable. “If you go with
one of those hare-brained Open Source solutions, then it might be fun
to code with, but after you get bigger it will probably run slower!”
etc…

I’m sure this site will need more than one developer for the initial
build. However, there is some concern here over whether Rails
developers are available. Is there a ready market for Rails
developers?

Rails will probably require fewer coders, and fewer lines of code, to
get more done.

Rails follows the well-understood LAMP profile of scaling. Amazon,
Google, and Yahoo all use Linux Apache MySQL and Perl/Python/PhP - or
their close equivalents. To scale, you add more servers. They are
cheaper than programmers.

–
Phlip
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ZeekLand ← NOT a blog!!

3

Hi - my 2 cents worth & some random thoughts…

There is no real answer to your question. Rails is a framework & c# is a
language.

Rails is web framework build on top of the programming language Ruby.

I’ve build sites in the Microsoft world [asp, vb web classes & vb.net]
as well as some java tomcat stuff, then moved to php, & now am now using
rails. I’ve lead teams building & managing sites for banks, .com
startups, & now a entertainment industry site with big plans.

From an engineering perspective, both microsoft & rails sites can scale
to whatever your requirements [unless your google, ebay, amazon, or
yahoo]. Both need a degree of thought & a certain level of expertise.

I’d have no hesitation in saying that an experienced rails developer
will be much more productive than an experienced c# developer. The
amount of code that you need to write to accomplish something in ruby
will generally be much less than c#, as well as less complex [MVC v’s
.net].

You might need to spend a bit more on your infrastructure, but developer
time is much more expensive than infrastructure.

As an exercise to understand your future headaches, pick a random task
that you know you will be doing & search the web for documentation &
examples on how to achieve it in each technology.

Consultants will normally recommend something that they know works [ie:
they probably have expertise in], and is risk free so they can’t be
blamed when it all goes wrong. To be fair to them, they are presenting
one of the industry standard technologies.

Getting good resources can be a problem if your location is a bit out of
the way.

rgds,

  • matt.

theduz wrote:

Hello,

We have a quality, but farily small, rails backed site running that I
developed last summer. The site is currently in our svn repo, and we
use capistrano to deploy to our linux based web server. The site is
rock solid, and the development effort was moderate. In fact, it was
actually a pleasure to build.

Now, we want to build a much larger site, both in terms of
capabilities of the site and the number of users. We have some
consultants recommending C# as the dev language of choice, a language
and dev environment with which I am not familiar. Can anyone comment
on the relative power of Rails vs C#? Anyone know of any feature
comparisons?

I’m sure this site will need more than one developer for the initial
build. However, there is some concern here over whether Rails
developers are available. Is there a ready market for Rails
developers?

Thank you.

Regards,
Rich

4

perhaps this is interesting for you.
http://www.castleproject.org/monorail/index.html

it’s an MVC Web Framework for .NET, inspired by ActionPack.
Runs with .NET on Windows and with mono Linux.

i have no experience with it. but perhaps it’s usefull.

perhaps these are interesting too:
http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/ruby_vs_aspnet_1.htm
http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/aspnet_ruby_agility.htm

HTH

5

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Matt S.
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 1:13 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Rails] Re: Relative power of Rails vs C#

Hi - my 2 cents worth & some random thoughts…

Thanks for the insights so far, please keep them coming.

So far no one has mentioned anything about the availability of Rails
developers. Is there a ready market for Rails talent? I know this site
will be too big to build all by myself.

Thank you.

Regards,

Rich

6

I use both, C# and Ruby on Rails and I must say it is not an easy task
to compare them.
We use C# for desktop and Web application development and in resent
months we also introduce the Rails and FLEX.

To tell you the bare truth it is not the language but the people that
maters.
There are far more C# developers on the market but one enthusiastic
Rails developer is almost priceless. Most Rais people are very
enthusiastic. The Rail is new and fun anybody that invest in it seams
to me like passionate programmer. C# programming is very often become
just a job.

If you ask Consultants they will probably tell you the most used
mediocre solution. It is a safety answer that will lead you nowhere.
Even so, they are not saying the truth. Most software is still in jsp
and php.

Rails and Ruby has a greatest momentum and that is something that
encourages me to do my web projects in Rails.

Find the right people and you can not make a wrong decision or the
shitty web application.

dima

On Feb 14, 8:12 pm, Matt S. [email protected]

7

On Feb 14, 2007, at 5:30 PM, Duzenbury, Rich wrote:

Hi - my 2 cents worth & some random thoughts…

Thanks for the insights so far, please keep them coming.

So far no one has mentioned anything about the availability of Rails
developers. Is there a ready market for Rails talent? I know this
site
will be too big to build all by myself.

Please have a look at http://www.workingwithrails.com .

Regards,
Craig

8

Thanks for the insights so far, please keep them coming.

So far no one has mentioned anything about the availability
of Rails
developers. Is there a ready market for Rails talent? I know this
site will be too big to build all by myself.

Please have a look at http://www.workingwithrails.com .

Thanks very kindly!

Regards,
Rich

9

On 2/14/07, theduz [email protected] wrote:

Now, we want to build a much larger site, both in terms of
capabilities of the site and the number of users. We have some
consultants recommending C# as the dev language of choice, a language
and dev environment with which I am not familiar.

Well you cannot trust consultants in that way. They may be recommending
C# to you because they have spare C# developers and want to rent them
to you for the implementation.

In fact recommending C# just seems downright odd. Surely they mean .NET?
C# for web development? Its an odd choice surely ASP.NET is the primary
part of the equation. Any C# stuff in there would be backbone
components,
which means that there is CPU processing going on there that is not
building
pages or hitting the database. It might also mean that you don’t have a
shared-
nothing system. Its also not a thin stack. Both of these mean that you
can hit scaling problems.

They also restrict your platform choice to windows? I thought you were
using Linux? Mono (.NET on Linux) is great, but its about 18 months
behind
.NET ‘classic’. I wouldn’t consider it as my launch platform. Mono is
your
safety net, when your windows only .NET application attracts the
interest
of a Linux customer.

Can anyone comment
on the relative power of Rails vs C#? Anyone know of any feature
comparisons?

You are not comparing like with like. Rails is a web framework,
implemented
in Ruby - a programming language. C# is a programming language, not
normally
associated with Web D., except through .NET framework. Its
close enough to Java with some nice additions. That does mean that it is
far more verbose than you would like for a big site. You really always
want
the RAD aspects of the system, like UI, web pages to be written in less
verbose, quicker to market languages, like PHP, perl, VB, ASP etc.

I’m sure this site will need more than one developer for the initial
build.

How big is the site? What time frame do you have? Rails party piece
is getting the initial build ready. With a .NET (or ahem C#) solution
there will be a lot more coding and time spent before anything is
visible.

However, there is some concern here over whether Rails
developers are available. Is there a ready market for Rails
developers?

Depends where you are. Its pretty tight. If you find a Rails developer
though, you know they can do the job. If you look for C# developers,
you don’t automatically get web development experience.

Your best bet is to train internally.