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Originally posted by Phat_Goat:

I know something simple like this could be done faster by hand but can you see the potential?

http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov

anyone tryed it yet?

Believe it or not I tried to get people to check out Ruby on Rails about two years ago. I had little luck, however, due to the advice from the Neverside Programming God And His Manager saying that Rails is just some crazy new thing that isn't really useful, and most people believed it.

What's interesting is that the people are not thinking for themselves all of the sudden, it's just that the general opinion of Rails has switched from a "it's not in PHP it must be evil" framework to "this is actually something interesting and useful." I guess it's my fault for expecting an open mind.

Maybe it's just me being cynical.

Last edited by Rad, April 11th, 2006 02:17 AM (Edited 2 times)

Here is my take on it. Just so we all know this as well, I do not consider myself to be a "PHP god" or any other type of programming God.

For now, Ruby is not mainstream enough for me to learn it. There are a few various reasons for that in my opinion.
1. Support from webhosts is not nearly what it should be for me to use it.
2. Complete reliance on Rails and only Rails.
3. No real defacto or extremely powerful IDE as of now that I am aware of.

No supposing that each of these were changed and Ruby really starts to pick up some steam, I would still wait until I saw actual companies using Ruby as their preferred system of choice, which honestly I really dont see happening any time soon. PHP, JSP, and ASP have way too much support when it comes to programmers. You can get a qualified programmer for any of these languages fairly easy, whereas Ruby it is not the same. Also I think that Rail's intuitive design is also a weakness, it takes a good programmer to understand how simple and powerful it is, and I think that most programmers really aren't ready to take that leap. Look at how much procedural code is still used, not only around here, but in true environments as well.

With all that said, I am not by any means against Ruby like some others are. It just comes down to the fact that it isn't ready for mainstream yet.

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Originally posted by BigToach:

3. No real defacto or extremely powerful IDE as of now that I am aware of.

Have you looked into RadRails?
http://www.radrails.org/

Originally posted by BigToach:

1. Support from webhosts is not nearly what it should be for me to use it.

I think PHP is better for people looking to put a personal site with cheap hosting. People actually using Rails will have a VPS, dedicated, or at least look for a host that will support them.

Originally posted by BigToach:

2. Complete reliance on Rails and only Rails.

I'm not sure what you mean. I started using Ruby before Rails was released and I preferred it much over PHP. Just becuase you haven't heard of Ruby before besides when Rails is discussed doesn't mean it's not a great language. Read Programming Ruby if you want to know what Ruby is before you make assumptions. It's good to learn a language per year anyways. If you don't continue to use Ruby after reading the book you will use something you learned from it anyways in future programming.

Originally posted by BigToach:

No supposing that each of these were changed and Ruby really starts to pick up some steam, I would still wait until I saw actual companies using Ruby as their preferred system of choice, which honestly I really dont see happening any time soon.

What would that prove? People successfully convinced their boss who doesn't know anything about Rails to start using it?

Originally posted by BigToach:

You can get a qualified programmer for any of these languages fairly easy, whereas Ruby it is not the same.

Rails isn't perfect for every situation. Either is PHP. Or Java. Or ASP. But it works well when you aren't switching programmers often.

Originally posted by BigToach:

Also I think that Rail's intuitive design is also a weakness, it takes a good programmer to understand how simple and powerful it is, and I think that most programmers really aren't ready to take that leap. Look at how much procedural code is still used, not only around here, but in true environments as well.

I admit it: bad programmers should not use Rails!

Originally posted by BigToach:

With all that said, I am not by any means against Ruby like some others are. It just comes down to the fact that it isn't ready for mainstream yet.

I don't want Ruby on Rails to be mainstream. As DHH said it, mainstream is about reaching people who don't care.

Last edited by Rad, April 11th, 2006 05:12 AM (Edited 1 times)

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.309321.3

lol...

How about this for not using Ruby: every hosting website I've seen doesn't have Ruby installed, nor Python (which is also a decent language from what I understand). Maybe when hosting companies put Ruby on their servers by default, usage will pick up. I don't like thinking of Ruby as ONLY Ruby on Rails, that's just stupid and naive. PHP has similar systems, but they must not be marketed the same way as RoR because no one hears about them. Ruby is a good language from what I have read, but I really have no desire to learn it right now for the above reason.

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Originally posted by James:

How about this for not using Ruby: every hosting website I've seen doesn't have Ruby installed, nor Python (which is also a decent language from what I understand). Maybe when hosting companies put Ruby on their servers by default, usage will pick up. I don't like thinking of Ruby as ONLY Ruby on Rails, that's just stupid and naive. PHP has similar systems, but they must not be marketed the same way as RoR because no one hears about them. Ruby is a good language from what I have read, but I really have no desire to learn it right now for the above reason.

You can always use Ruby on your local machine. I am sure that if you enjoyed programming in Ruby you would find a host that supports it. Even if you don't, you will learn something anyways.

The point is: try it, even if you don't think you'll end up liking it.

That's where I am up on the game. Having your own Dedicated Server is always nice when it comes to trying out new things.

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Originally posted by Rad:

You can always use Ruby on your local machine. I am sure that if you enjoyed programming in Ruby you would find a host that supports it. Even if you don't, you will learn something anyways.

The point is: try it, even if you don't think you'll end up liking it.

I can see Ruby as scripting language like perl or bash, but I don't use either that much at all. Unless I was trying to learn ruby or was running a server off my machine, I wouldn't install it. I obviously would if a program needed it, but I haven't encountered any program as such.

P.S. moved thread, and stickying because the entire internet isn't built on LAMP (PHP) which is what nearly everyone here seems to think. So they need to be better informed of alternative programming languages.

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Last edited by James, April 11th, 2006 05:54 AM (Edited 2 times)

If I wanted to start learning programming, whether client/server side, whaere would be the best place to start? I know HTML 4.01 backwards and fwds, and some CSS 2.0, and have played around with a bit of mysql and php, but nothing to start a career off of anyway. I tried Java programming back in HS, but I hated it cept when I was able to design a 3-d house using it.

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