Comments on: What Ruby on Rails Gets Right

By: Justin

Justin — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:13:56 +0000

For those looking for a "Consumer Reports" for web app frameworks, point your feed readers at Server Codex. The first of a long-running comparison series on web application frameworks is due to be published in November.

By: Jason Huggins

Jason Huggins — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 15:50:32 +0000

There is more chaos in the Python and Java framework landscape because Python and Java have been more popular for a longer period of time than Ruby. Do not fear, as Ruby becomes more popular, and Rails becomes big and all powerful, Ruby will start to see a proliferation of frameworks, too. Personally, I don’t see the number of choices as bad. It’s up there with that “Long Tail” theory of niche marketing… The car industry has the same problem/situation…. There are a million cars to choose from when you want to buy one, but thankfully there are lots of car sites and magazines to help you pick one you’ll be happy with.

So it would be nice if there was an equivalent of “Car & Driver” or “Consumer Reports” for web app frameworks… Newbies could feel free to only pay attention to the editor’s choice for “Top 10 Frameworks of 2005″. :-)

Without that kind of “Editor’s Choice”, the act of choosing is a chore. But just because Rails is in Ruby doesn’t make it any easier to choose a framework. Ruby might only have one car to sell (Rails), but it’s still just a car, and you have to compare it against all other cars (frameworks in other languages) to make a choice.

Ian Bicking commented on the language decision-space argument. He noticed that Zope and Rails fans picked the framework first, and the implementation language was secondary. For example, many people are only learning Ruby because of Rails, not the other way around.

By: Paul Bx

Paul Bx — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 14:50:55 +0000

The other factor with Rails, something it sort of gets right by circumstance, is that the Ruby web framework space is not very crowded. Python, on the other hand, has a dozen or more, with no obvious leader. Malcom Gladwell’s Blink does a nice job of explaining how increased choices impede the act of choosing — in fact, the more choices we have the more likely we are to choose none of them. I think that the implementation language (Ruby, Python, Java, PHP) defines a sort of decision-space. You look in the Python decision-space and you get dizzy. You look in the ruby decision-space and you just see Rails. Sold!