7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails

September 22, 2007 5:49PM -by Derek Sivers in Opinion


SUMMARY: I spent two years trying to make Rails do something it wasn’t meant to do, then realized my old abandoned language (PHP, in my case) would do just fine if approached with my new Rails-gained wisdom.
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asr: see user comments .. lot to learn from it

Part 2:
I would never, ever, have used ruby on rails for an enterprise app. Why? Well first, try Googling tutorials on how to do something with a Ruby library (ex. Rant) . What do you find? Next to nothing (and this website for whatever it is worth). Try a Google search for MS.Build or SOAP clients in C#. 1 gazillion results, some pro, some not. Ruby is a teenager, smart, rebellious, inexperienced, but will probably grow up to be a good citizen one day. There is fun code and there is give me money to buy food code. For the latter, I will use C# or Java,

Andy
Also, it's really easy in Rails to create APIs on top of existing database tables and Rails is best mates with SQL - it's just as easy to use SQL in Rails as in PHP.

Leandro | October 9, 2007 01:43 PM
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So what ure saying is that you never needed rails nor had the will to go that way, but you didit anyway, and what is even worse, you say you tried to turn a train into a boat, when what you actually did was putting a train in the sea and yelled at it to make it float.

#1 - “IS THERE ANYTHING RAILS/RUBY CAN DO THAT PHP CAN’T DO? … (thinking)… NO.” thats not even a reason to go for ruby or php. thigns are different in both of them.

#2 - OUR ENTIRE COMPANY’S STUFF WAS IN PHP: DON’T UNDERESTIMATE INTEGRATION
This is a great reason to have never tried rails. 2 years is a long time to learn that.

#3 - DON’T WANT WHAT I DON’T NEED
tatoo that on your forehead so you remember that after the first setback.

#4 - IT’S SMALL AND FAST
i dont know that as a fact and dont

#5 - IT’S BUILT TO MY TASTES
2 years late on that one too

#6 - I LOVE SQL
you must have missed it alot.

#7 - PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ARE LIKE GIRLFRIENDS: THE NEW ONE IS BETTER BECAUSE *YOU* ARE BETTER
you cheated on your wife with a 20 yr old girl, and after 2 years finally accepted you cant put up with her lifestyle.

Im sorry if its too direct and migth even sound aggressive, but 2 years programming with the php paradigm over rails api sounds like a huge mistake.

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Bob
SQL allows you to let the database do the work. But as far as alot of RAILS or other ORM users are concerned, pulling back rows from individual tables and "joining" them in memory in a very inefficient way is somehow beneficial. Because they dont know how to leverage existing technology.