# Another reason Rails doesn't suck **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [September 10, 2006, 5:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189 "2006-09-10T05:22:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phlip)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 5:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189/1 "2006-09-10T05:22:07Z")
Rubies: I got to the deceased equine flagellation party late, so I will find a different angle. Read: [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ConfigurationHell](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ConfigurationHell) That page lampoons a very well-regarded and highly successful servlet engine called Tomcat. (Written in a language whose name begins with J.) Installing and configuring Tomcat is a total pain in the sphincter. The system depends on endless configuration files, in various languages, with invisible connections between them, and no “trail of breadcrumbs” to lead you through everything. If you get one line item wrong, the system will might provide a log file, and might provide a cryptic error message. This might lead you to the wrong module and config file, looking in the wrong place to supply a fix. If you then screw that file up, you can’t tell if the new error message is progress or a regression. Now compare Tomcat to our least un-favorite servlet system. Rails prefers “convention over configuration”. That seems like a new nuisance; for example, some database table names must be plural (or something like that). It’s not a nuisance. The comparison to Tomcat illustrates just how powerful this weak but flexible concept can get! ---
**Author:** ![Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phlip)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 1:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189/2 "2006-09-10T13:02:36Z")
Phlip wrote: > That page lampoons a very well-regarded and highly successful servlet engine > called Tomcat. (Written in a language whose name begins with J.) To be honest, Tomcat is even by some people who like said unnamed language considered a baroque beast. And Apache couldn’t write documentation to save their lives. You’re beating a dead horse in the wrong place here. > Installing and configuring Tomcat is a total pain in the sphincter. I see your Tomcat, and I raise you by Oracle Express Edition on Ubuntu / Debian. Which won’t even -start up- out of the box when installed from a .deb because their preinst and postinst scripts are buggy. Yay IT. Tomcat at least lets you go with defaults and blissfully ignore all config files that aren’t your WEB-INF/web.xml when you just need a development setup. > It’s not a nuisance. The comparison to Tomcat illustrates just how powerful > this weak but flexible concept can get! It’s the very opposite of flexible, actually, in that it strictly binds you to What They Know Better. Which works, and works well, until you find that one edge case where it doesn’t, and you’re screwed. It’s cushy, but as it stands, it’s actually a limitation Where I work there’s probably more people talking German than English, and a lot of development gets done in Slovak - complete with code identifiers (the documentation is easier to access if you don’t have to map from slovak legalese to geekish all the time.) Rails table name conventions that can’t be overriden short of jumping through some major hoops have the usefulness of a chocolate teapot in that environment. David V. PS: Java trolls. GO HOME! ---
**Author:** ![Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phlip)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 12:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189/3 "2006-09-10T12:46:35Z")
Phlip [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Now compare Tomcat to our least un-favorite servlet system. Rails prefers > “convention over configuration”. That seems like a new nuisance; for > example, some database table names must be plural (or something like that). > > It’s not a nuisance. The comparison to Tomcat illustrates just how powerful > this weak but flexible concept can get! For English speaking countries. ---
**Author:** ![Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phlip)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 4:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189/4 "2006-09-10T16:50:53Z")
Stefan S. wrote: > > “convention over configuration” > For English speaking countries. Shouldn’t a team already be practicing Ubiquitous Language? whatever its base? David V. wrote: > I see your Tomcat, and I raise you by Oracle Express Edition on Ubuntu / > Debian. Whip me. Beat me. Make me install Oracle. ---
**Author:** ![Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phlip)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189/5 "2006-09-10T17:14:55Z")
> To be honest, Tomcat is even by some people who like said unnamed > language considered a baroque beast. And Apache couldn’t write > documentation to save their lives. You’re beating a dead horse in the > wrong place here. Hey! We try to get the docs at least 50% right 🙂 - for bad docs I point to the poster child #1 hibernate - only way to get even semi-decent docs is to buy a book > > Installing and configuring Tomcat is a total pain in the sphincter. It’s really not that bad by itself, but when you add in the large amount of thirdparty cruft that most Java web-apps require, yes it becomes a pain. > I see your Tomcat, and I raise you by Oracle Express Edition on Ubuntu / > Debian. Which won’t even -start up- out of the box when installed from a > .deb because their preinst and postinst scripts are buggy. Yay IT. Oracle 10g for linux out of the box will not install - the install shell files have hard-coded directory names for the engineers pesonal workstations - you have to edit these shell scripts yourself after downloading gigabytes of crap (why no cli installer?), and at the end of your frustrating hell of installation + fixes to Oracle’s own code you get a crappy web interface - even 9i had an application to control the db (as bad as it was). 10g is a hell of a mess - right now a decent db with good support could take a fair-sized chunk out of the Oracle market-share, it’s just not going to happen when for [not.net](http://not.net) projects it’s the de-facto ‘enterprise’ db. - And all this is on the Oracle supported platform Redhat enterprise. > PS: Java trolls. GO HOME! Ok I’ll get me coat… Kev ---
**Author:** ![Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phlip)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189/6 "2006-09-10T17:34:57Z")
Kevin J. wrote: > Hey! We try to get the docs at least 50% right 🙂 - for bad docs I > point to the poster child #1 hibernate - only way to get even > semi-decent docs is to buy a book Well, Hani of bileblog’s quotes from the Axis 2 API and docs are pretty scary too. Although the link to Tomcat’s DefaultServlet source was also enlightening. > and at the end > of your frustrating hell of installation + fixes to Oracle’s own code And here I thought giving up when sqlplus rejected the SYSTEM password I told the configuration 60 seconds before was being persistent… David V. ---
**Author:** ![Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Phlip](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phlip)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/another-reason-rails-doesnt-suck/68189/7 "2006-09-10T17:20:55Z")
Phlip wrote: > Stefan S. wrote: > > > > “convention over configuration” > > > For English speaking countries. > > Shouldn’t a team already be practicing Ubiquitous Language? whatever its > base? Tell that to existing in-house codebases. Also, you “are allowed” to other languages if you’re sure noone that can’t speak that language will ever have to read the code. Which just so happens to be a not really rare situation, and you can’t really think bad of developers that prefer to code in their native language when it’s permissible. David V.