Comments on: MVC on PHP and a quick comparison to Ruby on Rails

By: byron

byron — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:09:26 +0000

There is certainly a lot of karma around running ROR, but the whole process of just getting a Rails project started up scared me away. I do like how with PHP, you just throw a page out on the server and call it in a browser and you’re off to the races.

And if you aren’t worried about GPL’ing your project, and the overhead doesn’t scare you away, you can build virtually anything in the world you want on top of WordPress, which has a fully outfitted kitchen in addition to the kitchen sink to get you started. Just have the User Administration and publishing pieces make it work for me.

I’ve done a bit with Code Igniter, which is a nice MVC framework, but I absolutely hate writing a User Admin module. So, PHP and WordPress have me hooked. I really liked Code Igniter’s Active Record implementation. WordPress uses ezSQL, which makes the DB side very simple, but not quite as tricked out as Code Igniter’s Active Record.

Cheers,
Byron

By: Patrick Nelson

Patrick Nelson — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:32:30 +0000

PS: I’ve looked at this for quite a while. There’s still a lot of debate over which is faster – PHP vs RoR – but there are clear arguments that debunk benchmarks that favor one or the other. Arguments generally are about overall scope (IE: Building a sort algorithm instead of using built-in algorithm), overall use (IE: benchmark is fast in a limited test, but production is faster/slower) and efficiency of code written in comparisons.

Another thing that must be factored in that’s VERY difficult to measure accurately AND objectively are factors regarding preference — what’s easier to read, easier to write (less wordy, etc). Development speed too — RoR is good because it offers a ready-to-use framework AND if you’re a RoR developer going into another RoR project you’re not familiar with, you’ll pick it up quickly. Not quite the case with PHP!

Simply put — to me, it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Which one is better? It depends on who you are and what you’re doing. Bottom line.

By: Patrick Nelson

Patrick Nelson — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:14:25 +0000

To play devil’s advocate — RoR offers a singular framework that is incredibly powerful and widely understood. Everything is completely OOP. Generally, the reality is RoR provides more power than is often needed for typical website projects. I’d like to add, though, that PHP can probably provide the same level of functionality, flexibility and commonality (ie single “framework”) that RoR could as well. I definitely find that PHP seems somewhat chaotic and very odd to most old school OOP lovers, but — PHP is definitely growing and expanding in the OOP arena as well. For example, PHP now has name space support — that’s a huge plus for those looking for freedom/flexibility.

Ruby is a much more mature language, though — it can do quite a lot. I’m personally much more comfortable with the C/Perl style syntax of PHP and PHP is more than fast enough for me and is still very advanced. RoR just scares me because it’s so wordy and reminds me (in appearances only, albeit vastly different) of VBScript from the old ASP days.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:08:00 +0000

I doubt Ruby is faster than PHP. Especially PHP with the Zend Optimizer running. If it is, the speed difference would be nominal. I’ve learned enough about ROR to know that it’s a fine, well written language for web development, but I couldn’t see any reason for a well versed PHP Developer to make the switch. I’ll offer this… ROR is eerily similar to running PHP with CakePHP, so if given the choice between the two… what would make a person want one over the other?

By: wojak

wojak — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:33:22 +0000

There’s no problem to run only ruby without rails, all You have to do is some fcgi dispatcher (also available). Ruby is faster than php in many cases. There is more advantages of use Ruby instead of PHP, than to use PHP. It’s like PHP is chaos, and Ruby is harmony. Take a closer look at it. I was sceptical for long time…

By: Patrick Nelson

Patrick Nelson — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:16:31 +0000

PHP is where it’s at. I’m totally with you on that — but I’m biased! PHP is a great interpreted language — the language itself was written FOR the web, not adapted from another language. Ruby REQUIRES a framework to work well as a web app development language (otherwise, you’re stuck using CGI to execute Ruby scripts). The fact that PHP was already written for the web means that it already contains low-level constructs and built-in functions/objects that work very well with handling common web-based tasks. Plus, it runs VERY quickly (albeit I don’t have a benchmark comparison between RoR and PHP).