{ height: 1%; } - Ruby on Rails and User Interface Design: ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly

ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly

Richard White — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:03:00 +0000

I previously mentioned a programming language debate that sort of happened on the spot at Scoble’s OffTheGrid gathering. Well with the release of ScobleShow that wonderfully raw bit of video has been released. I’m too afraid to watch it myself so please tell me how it is (unless it’s really bad then just say something nice).

From OffTheGrid recap

Hopefully the impassioned and zealtrous(sic) on film argument about PHP v Python v Ruby between John, Michael and myself will see the light of day (If not I’d like it for the home videos to show the grandkids one day). In it I sound like a total 37signals zealot talking about constraints and conventions but that’s what you get when you mix beer, geek egos and a camera. The oh so predictable developer argument began with the simple question “How does Rails help you write more maintainable software?”. I have had a lot of thoughts on the subject lately and started a manifesto of sorts of the subject of software maintainability for web applications. I’ll try and post that sometime soon.

"ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly" by Richard White

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 23:28:22 +0000

@rich: I’ll just second what lincoln said.
@lincoln: When you have the time to throw yourself completely at a new language/framework it’s easier to ramp up. Thanks for the compliment.

"ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly" by lincoln

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:40:14 +0000

@ric : in my opinion, I like the openess and flexiability of the prototype library with either scriptalious or moo.fx for ui treatments. However, you might find other packages easier to work with if they are integrated within your development framework.

@richard. Wow! You’ve got your hands dirty with rails that fast! Slimtimer is such a great app.

"ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly" by Ric

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:43:12 +0000

I have been a C# consultant or years, but now I am working in Java because I want to do OpenAJAX. The language is not a problem – it is the environment. Eclispse vs. Visual Studio or mySql vs. Sql Server. The REAL big problem is Ajax- there are more than 100 different frameworks – which one is the best?

"ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly" by Richard White

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 07:12:18 +0000

@lincoln: We’re even having our first Missoula Ruby meetup this week. Of course, I’m moving to SF in a month so there goes that.

I got my feet wet with RoR back in December when I first started working on Kiko. Since I was mainly front end I only got a taste of it. I probably really started working on it in February when I started AjaxScaffold and SlimTimer.

"ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly" by lincoln

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 05:17:37 +0000

who knew missoula was a hotbed of coders! I hardly talk code to anyone in my town, which is a shame. I really like what you had to say about Rails and constraints. None of the others could match it. That pretty much sums up the best reason to adopt ruby\rails as a language and methodology. Traditionally, I work in PHP and love the freedom that it gives me but sort of want the benefits of constrants (yes, phpcake) that rails offers. Curious to know when you first picked up on ruby and or ror?

"ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly" by Richard White

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:55:00 +0000

Yeah “language wars” was a misnomer, it was really about web development stacks PHP/Pear vs Ruby/Rails vs Python/Django vs Perl/CPAN modules.

"ScobleShow's Language War Starring Yours Truly" by Frank Cefalu

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:56:27 +0000

PHP V Python I can see… But PHP V Ruby? I mean I can see the fact that Ruby is a great platform, but neverless it still needs PHP to make any form of database connections to interact with the server.

Blah Blah. PHP is better, kudos to PHP. I like Ruby On Rails too, very good for productivity. Especially for building custom Blogs on the fly within 40 minutes.