What are the benefits of RoR?

Rails
1

We’ve all seen the productivity benefits of RoR. It would be worthwhile
to figure out where they come from.

For me, I’d say the following:

  1. The number one benefit isn’t from Rails per se, but from Ruby, or any
    other dynamic OO language (like Python). They avoid the weaknesses of
    loosely typed, procedural languages like Perl & PHP, but have the
    swiftness that Java/C++/C# lack.

  2. Next on my list is the benefits of a configurationless O/R mapper -
    ActiveRecord. I can hack a of this together in PHP, or configure it up
    with Hibernate, but with AR, I’m good to go, out of the box, for the
    basics - and the advanced requires just a few lines.

  3. I also enjoy the fact that ActionPack does the bookkeeping necessary
    to turn URLs into Controller+Action+Template, and (using url_for), vice
    versa. Also that it prepops forms, and creates objects from form data.

  4. Last, I find the rails command line and environment to be very
    convienent. I’m referring to the Rails::Generator and
    Rails::Initializer her. Unit test stubs, testing environments,
    consoles, and logging. I could do all this myself, but having rails to
    do it takes it off my mind.

To give it numbers, I’d say:
#1 35%
#2 30%
#3 25%
#4 10%
although, on big projects, things at the top of the list contribute
more, and, for little projects, things on the bottom.

What do you say?

(PS A good follow up to this might be: “What can we learn from this to
other environments.” Stay tuned…)

2

I’d like to hear other people’s top list on how RoR improves their
productivity.

It’s important that we understand this, not only so that we can promote
RoR (and increase jobs & demand!), but also so that we can learn from it
and further it.

List R. wrote:

We’ve all seen the productivity benefits of RoR. It would be worthwhile
to figure out where they come from.

For me, I’d say the following:

  1. The number one benefit isn’t from Rails per se, but from Ruby, or any
    other dynamic OO language (like Python). They avoid the weaknesses of
    loosely typed, procedural languages like Perl & PHP, but have the
    swiftness that Java/C++/C# lack.

  2. Next on my list is the benefits of a configurationless O/R mapper -
    ActiveRecord. I can hack a of this together in PHP, or configure it up
    with Hibernate, but with AR, I’m good to go, out of the box, for the
    basics - and the advanced requires just a few lines.

  3. I also enjoy the fact that ActionPack does the bookkeeping necessary
    to turn URLs into Controller+Action+Template, and (using url_for), vice
    versa. Also that it prepops forms, and creates objects from form data.

  4. Last, I find the rails command line and environment to be very
    convienent. I’m referring to the Rails::Generator and
    Rails::Initializer her. Unit test stubs, testing environments,
    consoles, and logging. I could do all this myself, but having rails to
    do it takes it off my mind.

To give it numbers, I’d say:
#1 35%
#2 30%
#3 25%
#4 10%
although, on big projects, things at the top of the list contribute
more, and, for little projects, things on the bottom.

What do you say?

(PS A good follow up to this might be: “What can we learn from this to
other environments.” Stay tuned…)

3

Whats to understand?

Think Miller Lite(RoR) vs. Budwieser(Java, PHP, ASP)

You want less or more?

Less time, less code, less duplication of effort

I just stepped into Rails a few days ago, but I can already see that it
will
make its way into the enterprise. Java and C# developers will enjoy the
pure
OO of Ruby, PHP developers will enjoy typing less code.

I think the biggest stepping stone right now is improving the SAPI
interfaces for webservers. FastCGI and mod_ruby are a little rough
around
the edges for large-scale commercial sites.

Getting better looking websites for both Ruby and Rails would help as
well
from the marketing standpoint.

I also think that DHH should continue to keep full commit rights tightly
controlled to maintain a controlled direction for the Rails framework.

Bob S.