# RoR or Java for community portal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 2, 2006, 11:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547 "2006-01-02T23:21:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2006, 11:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/1 "2006-01-02T23:21:46Z")
Hello Ruby users, let me introduce myself briefly - I am a student at OvG University Magdeburg, Germany, and I hope to get some advice for a nonprofit student community portal I am involved with, just in case somebody is interested: [http://www.webuni.de](http://www.webuni.de), having around 3000 active users. Development is done on a voluntary basis by members of the community, mainly IT students with too much spare time. At present, the code base is in Php - it’s huge, and nearly unmaintainable. There are 120 reported unfixed bugs, and as it’s really bad coding style - mixing presentation, SQL and PHP code - fixing bugs has become close to impossible. We decided to move away from Php. Java is popular at our university, and everybody is familiar with it. At first I proposed to use a java solution based on Hibernate, Tapestry and Spring/Acegi security. I have experience using these frameworks, but I’m not too convinced other junior developers will be able or willing to learn them, too. Also a java solution might be overkill, since it will always stay a regional community, mainly focused on the city and student life of Magdeburg, so performance is not the main issue. Now that’s where Ruby on Rails comes in - as I read about rails, I thought this might be a way for us to go. I have read “Agile web development with Rails” and “Programming Ruby 2nd Edition”, but have no further practical Ruby experience. Are there any experiences with using Ruby on Rails for a community portal? Maybe some experienced users could give some hints on where the advantages of Ruby and Rails are for this case. One thing I imagined was, that developing application pieces - we call them “modules” - will be easier to implement since Ruby gives something like built-in static crosscutting through mix-ins. Are there any experiences with unexperienced Java developers using Ruby? Or is it just a matter of taste, and I’m better off with sticking to the Java solution? Best regards Gregor M. ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 5:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/2 "2006-01-03T17:00:25Z")
Go with Rails. I’m a Java developer working on my first Rails project and I’m finding it easy to learn and breathtaking in its productivity. For examples of community sites using Rails, see the flagship sites developed by the Rails inventors, Basecamp ([http://www.basecamphq.com/](http://www.basecamphq.com/)), Backpack ([http://www.backpackit.com/](http://www.backpackit.com/)), and others developed by 37 Signals. Quite frankly, as much as I love Java, for most web applications, Rails and Rails-like environments are the future. dean On 1/2/06, Gregor M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > unmaintainable. There are 120 reported unfixed bugs, and as it’s really > always stay a regional community, mainly focused on the city and student > > Gregor M. > > – > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). > > * * * > > Rails mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) – Dean W. [http://www.aspectprogramming.com](http://www.aspectprogramming.com) [http://www.newaspects.com](http://www.newaspects.com) [http://www.contract4j.org](http://www.contract4j.org) ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/3 "2006-01-03T19:00:31Z")
On Jan 2, 2006, at 5:21 PM, Gregor M. wrote: > advantages of Ruby and Rails are for this case. > I’ve been involved with community portal like software for years. All > but one effort in Java. A year or two ago I used Common Lisp on a > project. That was the end of Java for new projects of this type for > me. No More! I’ve been using Ruby on and off for various things for a > few years and with all the noise about Rails (and, to be honest, the > appearance of a book) I decided to check it out (by reading the > book). Pretty convincing, but… Just before Christmas I decided to > give Rails a serious shot. More than pretty convincing. And no book > could possibly convey this, you have to try it. RoR has a very very > good way of dealing with the View/Controller part of MVC – there > can’t be anything like it in Java, and there could be but isn’t in > Common Lisp. The way this works is wonderful. If you are a Java > programmer and haven’t tried RoR you _just_ _don’t_ _know_ what I > mean. If you are a smalltalk or lisp programmer, you are going to > experience something like what you are familiar with but it’ll be so > unexpected you’ll be shocked. The performance of RoR is not an issue for my stuff. I doubt it will be for yours either (3000 users is well within range of Rails unless they are doing something unusual (but this _is_ a university environment so maybe they are :-)) > One thing I imagined was, that developing application pieces - we call > them “modules” - will be easier to implement since Ruby gives > something > like built-in static crosscutting through mix-ins. Wow. You _are_ a Java head 🙂 Mixins, compile-time execution of code, and reopening of classes, especially in combination, provide for a very nice programming experience. This is where I’d be concerned with Rails. I don’t know how RoR will work with independent development groups working on quasi-independent chunks of code. I don’t use ActiveRecord, and I’m suspicious of the concept of ‘model’ supported by this kind of thing, but I have to admit that ActiveRecord looks to be well done. I don’t see the packaging of these development efforts formally set out in RoR. This is not to say they are not there, but this doesn’t appear to have been a major focus so far. Now, lets be serious here – I think there are several ways to achieve this, there is nothing in RoR that prevents it. But you are going to have to be careful. Watch out for model conflicts (the controllers and views can, and should, be modularised but I can’t see how to do this in the model – models are named by a symbol, and symbols in Ruby are not modularised – this worries me (somebody, please tell me I’m wrong)). (Well, the fact is, I’ve replace the model that comes with RoR with my own based on xampl (see my sig) and that is completely modularised and so I’m pretty sure that some RoR solution should be possible). The RoR ‘engine’ approach looks interesting too. > Are there any experiences with unexperienced Java developers using > Ruby? Did you mean experienced Java developers using RoR/Ruby? If so, then I’ll say it is a good experience. I think Ruby is easier to learn than Java, but maybe the tools are a bit raw for beginners, I don’t know. RoR is much more comprehensible in a much shorter time than any Java framework I’ve used. > Or is it just a matter of taste, and I’m better off with sticking > to the > Java solution? No, it is not a matter of taste. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to say you aren’t better sticking to Java 🙂 Cheers, Bob > Best regards > Gregor M. > > – > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). > > * * * > > Rails mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) * * * Bob H. – blogs at \<[http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) hutch/\> Recursive Design Inc. – [http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) Raconteur – [http://www.raconteur.info/](http://www.raconteur.info/) xampl for Ruby – [http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/) ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 9:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/4 "2006-01-03T21:15:08Z")
Hello Bob, thanks for you taking the time to answer! > I’ve been involved with community portal like software for years. All > but one effort in Java. A year or two ago I used Common Lisp on a > project. That was the end of Java for new projects of this type for > me. No More! I’ve been using Ruby on and off for various things for a > few years and with all the noise about Rails (and, to be honest, the > appearance of a book) I decided to check it out (by reading the > book). Pretty convincing, but… Just before Christmas I decided to > give Rails a serious shot. More than pretty convincing. And no book > could possibly convey this, you have to try it. RoR has a very very > good way of dealing with the View/Controller part of MVC – there > can’t be anything like it in Java, and there could be but isn’t in > Common Lisp. The way this works is wonderful. If you are a Java > programmer and haven’t tried RoR you _just_ _don’t_ _know_ what I > mean. If you are a smalltalk or lisp programmer, you are going to > experience something like what you are familiar with but it’ll be so > unexpected you’ll be shocked. Sounds like we should give it a chance by starting a prototype in Ruby. > The performance of RoR is not an issue for my stuff. I doubt it will > be for yours either (3000 users is well within range of Rails unless > they are doing something unusual (but this _is_ a university > environment so maybe they are :-)) It was really hard for me to find hard facts on RoR performance. One website mentioned the performance is eight times less than Java - that is without any DB access involved. This kind of scared me, but as our Php application has no performance issues, there shouldn’t be any in ruby, as I heared it is comparable in speed. Can you confirm that? > Watch out for > model conflicts (the controllers and views can, and should, be > modularised but I can’t see how to do this in the model – models are > named by a symbol, and symbols in Ruby are not modularised – this > worries me (somebody, please tell me I’m wrong)). (Well, the fact is, > I’ve replace the model that comes with RoR with my own based on xampl > (see my sig) and that is completely modularised and so I’m pretty > sure that some RoR solution should be possible). The RoR ‘engine’ > approach looks interesting too. What engine approach? So in short ActiveRecord models cannot be enhanced by modules, right? Thats no good news, as this was a primary feature I was looking for. I looked into the xampl project, but then I would have to convince the team that we should replace the model part of a MVC framework I’m proposing to use, guess they’ll wonder if it can then be so good after all. I’ll look deeper into this, anyway. > Did you mean experienced Java developers using RoR/Ruby? If so, then > I’ll say it is a good experience. I think Ruby is easier to learn > than Java, but maybe the tools are a bit raw for beginners, I don’t > know. RoR is much more comprehensible in a much shorter time than any > Java framework I’ve used. Hmm, I think we’ll just have to test this on the prototype. I meant unexperienced developers, since most developers are “just” IT students, so there are also people with no deep insight in advanced java programming, though we have some “freaks” also 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 12:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/5 "2006-01-04T00:14:37Z")
‘Engine’ approach: [http://rails-engines.org](http://rails-engines.org) - james ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 3:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/6 "2006-01-04T03:37:12Z")
On Jan 3, 2006, at 3:15 PM, Gregor M. wrote: > Hello Bob, > > thanks for you taking the time to answer! No problem. I hope I’m not confusing thing… > > good way of dealing with the View/Controller part of MVC – there > > can’t be anything like it in Java, and there could be but isn’t in > > Common Lisp. The way this works is wonderful. If you are a Java > > programmer and haven’t tried RoR you _just_ _don’t_ _know_ what I > > mean. If you are a smalltalk or lisp programmer, you are going to > > experience something like what you are familiar with but it’ll be so > > unexpected you’ll be shocked. > > Sounds like we should give it a chance by starting a prototype in > Ruby. For sure, but this isn’t the only reason to use Ruby. W.r.t. prototyping, I was talking to a colleague this afternoon about how I can will be using Rails and Ruby to workout some design issues then re-implement in Java. This’ll still save me a ton of time. > > The performance of RoR is not an issue for my stuff. I doubt it will > > be for yours either (3000 users is well within range of Rails unless > > they are doing something unusual (but this _is_ a university > > environment so maybe they are :-)) > > It was really hard for me to find hard facts on RoR performance. One > website mentioned the performance is eight times less than Java - that > is without any DB access involved. This kind of scared me, but as our > Php application has no performance issues, there shouldn’t be any in > ruby, as I heared it is comparable in speed. Can you confirm that? Ruby is slower than Java, 8x sounds possible. However, we _are_ talking about web apps and the internet will be the bottle neck even with Ruby. And then when you add in DB access, well, I don’t know if there’s a lot of practical difference. I do not think a typical community portal is going to see anything like an 8x difference – I’m not seeing any difference on the stuff I’m playing with (in fact, on my powerbook G4 with 2GB of RAM I think Ruby serves dynamic content a bit faster, it sure as hell runs faster in development mode (about 2s in RoR to start up, about 40 seconds in Java to start – on my desktop dual CPU G5 thing RoR starts up in a fraction of a second – this is _very_ nice). > What engine approach? [http://rails-engines.org](http://rails-engines.org) > So in short ActiveRecord models cannot be enhanced > by modules, right? Thats no good news, as this was a primary feature I > was looking for. I looked into the xampl project, but then I would > have > to convince the team that we should replace the model part of a MVC > framework I’m proposing to use, guess they’ll wonder if it can then be > so good after all. I’ll look deeper into this, anyway. It isn’t that bad, sorry to leave that impression. _Inside_ the model there are no restrictions or problems. Modules are also used to control name conflicts. In Ruby, symbols are _global_ they are not in a module. So if you have two models, both called :model then you’ve got a problem. Now, I _think_ this can be dealt with but I don’t see any explicit discussion in ActiveRecord documentation (I don’t mean anything more than that). And considering how easy it was for me to deal with this on my own, I can’t imagine that there isn’t some way to deal with this already in RoR that I just don’t know about. Now, I happened to see something about model prefixes this afternoon, I have not pursued this, but if it is what it sounds like, then this will do the trick well enough. This may all be a simple documentation problem… documentation missing, or me just being a poor reader of the documentation 🙂 > so there are also people with no deep insight in advanced java > programming, though we have some “freaks” also 🙂 Sounds like fun! Cheers, Bob > – > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). > > * * * > > Rails mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) * * * Bob H. – blogs at \<[http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) hutch/\> Recursive Design Inc. – [http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) Raconteur – [http://www.raconteur.info/](http://www.raconteur.info/) xampl for Ruby – [http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/) ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 1:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/7 "2006-01-05T01:57:49Z")
> Ruby is slower than Java, 8x sounds possible. However, we _are_ > talking about web apps and the internet will be the bottle neck even > with Ruby. And then when you add in DB access, well, I don’t know if > there’s a lot of practical difference. Well, I left DB Access out since Hibernate will beat ActiveRecord hands down anyway I suppose - no second level cache, no query cache and so on… Well, at least ActiveRecord won’t be slower than handcoded PHP database access and is much easier to use. > I do not think a typical > community portal is going to see anything like an 8x difference – I agree, as we don’t have problems with PHP, too. Fast enough ist fast enough. Period. [http://rails-engines.org](http://rails-engines.org) - looks interesting, I think we will make use of this, thanks. > Well, looking at the source code… The > ActionController::dependencies#model method calls > ActionController::dependencies#require\_dependencies which in turn > calls Object.require\_dependency. Object.require\_dependency is defined > in Object in the ActiveSupport file dependencies.rb (by re-opening > the Object class) and calls ActiveSupport::Dependencies#depend\_on > which ultimately ends up calling either load or require on a file name. > > So, to cut it short, instead of writing: > > model :my\_model > > everywhere, you can write: > > model ‘my\_application/my\_model’ > > And all is well. > > I no longer have any concern about the model side of things. Thank you very much for looking into the code and clarifying this. That was really helpful to me! Anyway, today I held my first presentation about the problems in our present application, proposed useful patterns for solving them and then presented a Java solution based on Hibernate, Spring, Tapestry, Acegi Security. This stack is suited to good Java web development, but it has one big problem: Really steep learning curve, much time needed to learn it. Then I told them that I will present Ruby on Rails on Monday, offering all “really” needed functionality from the Java frameworks plus higher productivity and other useful features - of course everybody was interested - and so am I 🙂 Thanks again for helping out! Cheers Gregor ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 2:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/8 "2006-01-04T14:28:18Z")
On Jan 3, 2006, at 9:12 PM, Bob H. wrote: > It isn’t that bad, sorry to leave that impression. _Inside_ the > sounds like, then this will do the trick well enough. > > This may all be a simple documentation problem… documentation > missing, or me just being a poor reader of the documentation 🙂 Well, looking at the source code… The ActionController::dependencies#model method calls ActionController::dependencies#require\_dependencies which in turn calls Object.require\_dependency. Object.require\_dependency is defined in Object in the ActiveSupport file dependencies.rb (by re-opening the Object class) and calls ActiveSupport::Dependencies#depend\_on which ultimately ends up calling either load or require on a file name. So, to cut it short, instead of writing: ``` model :my_model ``` everywhere, you can write: ``` model 'my_application/my_model' ``` And all is well. I no longer have any concern about the model side of things. Cheers, Bob * * * Bob H. – blogs at \<[http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) hutch/\> Recursive Design Inc. – [http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) Raconteur – [http://www.raconteur.info/](http://www.raconteur.info/) xampl for Ruby – [http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/) ---
**Author:** ![hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@hildolfur](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/hildolfur)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-or-java-for-community-portal/51547/9 "2006-01-05T02:51:44Z")
On Jan 4, 2006, at 7:57 PM, Gregor M. wrote: > plus > higher productivity and other useful features - of course everybody > was > interested - and so am I 🙂 Let us know how it goes. Cheers, Bob * * * Bob H. – blogs at \<[http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) hutch/\> Recursive Design Inc. – [http://www.recursive.ca/](http://www.recursive.ca/) Raconteur – [http://www.raconteur.info/](http://www.raconteur.info/) xampl for Ruby – [http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/)