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Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

mrichman — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:43:38 GMT

I knew that subject would get your attention

I've never programmed in Ruby before, but I just watched these impressive presentations on Ruby on Rails, and I would love to see the ASP.NET community counter with demos of their own:

http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts

While Ruby on Rails may seem to allow one to get a simple app up and running quickly, ASP.NET has a whole lot less *total* code, even if it may take a bit longer. For example, I bet that blog demo can be done in ASP.NET with one .aspx file with little or no code-behind and a web.config, plus an .mdf.

Symfony looked cool too: http://downloads.symfony-project.com/demo/cart/cart.mov

Thoughts?

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

unix? — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 13:43:04 GMT

I am a .NET Developer (in my job). I have tested RoR and I think it is fantastic. Programming makes fun and is very nice not to code so much code.

Very good AJAX integration. Unit, functional testing, integration testing integrated (and very easy/fast to use). I think the complete framework is focused on agile development.

Very productive framework - the best I have ever seen (until now). Caching, MVC ... integrated too.
An OR/Mapper is integrated too

And the programming language Ruby is very modern. It is much mode dynamic and not strongly typed like C#, Java,... it has mixins, ... and you can extend a foreign class without modify the source class.
I think the future in programming are not strongly typed languages - see F# of Microsoft research.
With scaffolding you can reduce the code you have to write or the drag and drop actions you need.

Deployment is managed with Switchtower, ... very cool.

I think RoR can have a big potential for the future. The community is very active and RoR 1.1 will be released soon. The people are very friendly and have nice podcasts and videos.

Since I know about RoR I have fun in programming again and I am much faster and more productive. I hope that RoR will have such a success like PHP. Java and .NET are in my point of view old technology (about 10 years) and have a syntax like C/C++ (much older).

Take a look of the quotes: http://www.rubyonrails.org/quotes
Rails seems to fascinate others too.

Have fun!

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

balupton — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:49:54 GMT

unix? wrote:

Since I know about RoR I have fun in programming again and I am much faster and more productive. I hope that RoR will have such a success like PHP. Java and .NET are in my point of view old technology (about 10 years) and have a syntax like C/C++ (much older).

I may be mistaken but Wasn't the first release of .NET in Visual Studio .NET 2002? Which makes it only 3-4 Years old (depends how you want to count )

And about your C Syntax remark, C is a very useable syntax and if not the most popular syntax.
It's easy to code and understand and it's soo widespread that it become a 'standard'.

But I just watched the flikr demo, and I must say wow.

I'm in love with PHP and javascript, and really dislike ASPs way of doing things as what I type in my source isn't what is actually displayed for the user.

But I don't think it will catch on anytime soon, around 2-5 years if all goes well.

But yer, i'll stick with my javascript and php

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Harlequin — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:05:56 GMT

Just don't like the Ruby syntax, not very friendly to the eye

def bfs(e)
    q = []
    e.mark
    yield e
    q.push e
    while not q.empty?
        u = q.shift
        u.edge_iterator do |v|
        if not v.marked?
            v.mark
            yield v
            q.push v
        end
    end
end
bfs(e) {|v| puts v}

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

balupton — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:18:45 GMT

Harlequin wrote:

Just don't like the Ruby syntax, not very friendly to the eye

def bfs(e)
    q = []
    e.mark
    yield e
    q.push e
    while not q.empty?
        u = q.shift
        u.edge_iterator do |v|
        if not v.marked?
            v.mark
            yield v
            q.push v
        end
    end
end
bfs(e) {|v| puts v}

Yer it does look quite horrible now that i've seen that.
Looks like a basic and C mix...

And for 'bfs' anyone else thinkin the same thing im thinkin for what that is meant to stand for....

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Eirik — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:08:09 GMT

My big, wet dream right now is to have the Ruby language on .NET - that would make me extremely productive!

While C# is a lot better in that respect than Java, it still is a lot of typing in at least two senses of the word. Ruby is simply elegant - as the exception in the post above proves .

While the shorthand is fine, the code may be written like this:

def bfs(e)
    q = Array.new()
    e.mark()
    yield( e )
    q.push( e )
    while not q.empty?()
        u = q.shift()
        u.edge_iterator do |v|
        if not v.marked?()
            v.mark()
            yield( v )
            q.push( v )
        end
    end
end

bfs(e) { |v| puts( v ) }

...which makes it a little easier to distinguish methods and arguments - but its really just a sprinkle of sugar. If methods and variables had been given meaningful names it would be even easier.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

William Kempf — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:26:31 GMT

The C# equivalent is pretty close, making both arguments for/against (at least for this specific example) a little off the base.

IEnumberable bfs(MyType e)
{
   List q = new ArrayList();
   e.Mark();
   yield return e;
   while (q.Count > 0)
   {
      object u = q[0];
      q.RemoveAt(0);
      foreach (MyType v in u.EdgeIterator())
      {
         if (!v.Marked)
         {
            v.Mark();
            yield return v;
            q.Add(v);
         }
      }
   }
}

foreach(MyType v in bfs(e))
{
Console.WriteLine(v);
}

Note: This was typed free form and may contain numerous errors, but it should illustrate the point.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

rhm — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:32:18 GMT

I'll have a look at some of those demos later. I read some basic RoR tutorials a while back and wasn't overly impressed. To impress me I need to see something complex and then judge the comprehensibility of the code, rather than see how few lines some trivial problem can be solved in.

And without turning this into a Ruby discussion - I like strongly typed languages because I like to find type errors at compile time. And I'm very sceptical of "productivity improvement" claims regardless of where they come from. I had enough of using dynamic/weak typed languages at university where we'd get the program written and then spend hours hunting down the stupidest little errors that only became apparent at runtime. Oh, and there's nothing particularly modern about Ruby except that it's a johnny-come-lately. The ideas have been around for decades - dynamic typing is as old as strong typing. If you missed out on having to code in LISP, consider yourself lucky.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Harlequin — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:06:55 GMT

Ruby isn't compiled like .NET/Java is it?

If not, then it should be up against classic ASP/ColdFusion/PHP...

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

W3bbo — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:59:03 GMT

balupton wrote:

I may be mistaken but Wasn't the first release of .NET in Visual Studio .NET 2002? Which makes it only 3-4 Years old (depends how you want to count )

ASP.NET was available to "work with" around 2001, it wasn't until 2002 that developers got an IDE for it. Thus making ASP.NET 5 years old.

Java is much older, but a better comparison would be J2EE Vs. .NET.

I don't think you can compare RoR with ASP.NET given that the whole .NET framework (and almost every Managed API) is available to you. To my knowledge, RoR doesn't have anything like CreateObject/GetObject.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

unix? — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:23:32 GMT

.NET is no new technology compared to Java and Java is 10 years old! That was my message.

I think RoR is nice - I have found my favorite for web application development. I know .NET very well and working with this at work every day. RoR is my favorite!

For the future I think there are 2 possible directions:
1. strong typed languages like Java, .NET with AOP
2. dynamic languages like Ruby.

I personally prefer the 2nd choice.

Perhaps Microsoft can learn from projects like RoR, Spring, Hibernate, and so on. They can be very useful.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Eirik — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:52:30 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

I don't think you can compare RoR with ASP.NET given that the whole .NET framework (and almost every Managed API) is available to you. To my knowledge, RoR doesn't have anything like CreateObject/GetObject.

In RoR you have the whole Ruby framework and all standard and third-party libraries available to you...

I'm not actually sure which CreateObject/GetObject you are referring to as I don't do ASP.NET (so I am not arguing in any direction, just offering a Ruby / Rails perspective), but if it has something to do with OLE objects you could do this in your Rails app:

require 'win32ole'
excel = WIN32OLE.new('excel.application')

workbook = excel.Workbooks.Add()

excel.Range("a1")['Value'] = 42

excel.

ActiveWorkbook.Save(filename)

excel.Quit()

...and then serve the fantastic budget spreadsheet back to the user.

Note that I made a wild guess about what CreateObject and GetObject actually is - so please feel free to enlighten me .

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

cravikiran — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:13:20 GMT

Its going to have opinion and bias mixed in (plus its been a few months since I touched RoR) but heres my take :

As I learned about RoR and started doing the basic stuff thats in the Shock and Awe demos, I was like wow - this is really cool. I have to say the MVC implementation is good.

But when I decided to try a real application, I got really frustrated by how little control I had over key areas like the SQL statements being issued. I know I know... David says performance shouldnt be a concern, etc (I may be putting words in his mouth but thats how it stuck as to his opinion on it). In real world apps, effective SQL and being able to cache, etc. is important.

After my run with RoR, I played around with ASP.NET 2.0. My thought the whole time was similar ... where are the blog in 2 min (or 5 or 10 or w/e the RoR demo was) demos on this? Cause really, its a whole lot easier with ASP.NET 2.0 than in RoR. Its practically no code - all the controls are drag and droppable. Now, the biggest thing is that when you want to come back and do a real app in ASP.NET 2.0 after the initial wowing, you still can! You are the ones writing the SQL statements for the data sources (with tools to make it quick) and caching is very easy to implement. A lot of the plumbing is there for logins, user management, site navigation, etc, etc. And with all of it, if you need to, the provider model is easy to customize as you like.

That definitely sounds biased but thats how I honestly feel about it: They've done good with RoR's marketing (the "demos") but beyond basics, it really disappoints. Not so with ASP.NET 2.0 - only thing is maybe someone should do the 2-5 min "demo" for ASP.NET 2.0.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

niswilsonnissen — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:56:40 GMT

Could someone please explain me where the .NET equivalent of ActiveRecord (in RoR) is located in the framework? I would rather not spend time building a O/R mapping layer.

Cheers,
Nis

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Eirik — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:31:28 GMT

Some good points there cravikiran. Rails shines if the ActiveRecord model fits your purpose, but with ASP and Visual Studio a lot of the "straying from the Rails path" becomes much simpler - especially if you are used to the Visual approach to development. Coming from a unix background I still feel a little more comfortable with the pure text-editing approach to GUI or markup layout as well as the coding.

If you don't like the ActiveRecord handling the database you may write your own SQL in the model files - and imho it's not exactly hard. Rails doesn't force its methodology on you - it just offers a nice set of classes and methods - and a default filesystem layout which eases you into the MVC-way of developing. Everything is still overridable and extendable - but you don't have the comfort of drag-and-drop controls and the code-generation facilities (scaffolding) may feel a little limited for ASP.NET developers...

Also, much of the productivity value of ASP.NET and Visual Studio is "limited" to Microsoft products and platforms (I didn't say that there is something wrong with this [A]) which cost quite a few $'s while Rails can be deployed... almost anywhere.

I am however a little inclined towards thinking that Rails is better for smaller projects while ASP.NET might be better suited for larger scale (and especially) business applications. Right now I am doing a medium sized (but extremely mission critical) application in Rails - and so far I feel quite confident that Rails has enough degrees of freedom to let me finish in style. Personally I would love to do a thick-client winforms complement in .NET - but unfortunately my boss is a little too anti-MS for that to happen anytime soon.

I guess my point is... Ruby is fun, Rails is fun, .NET is fun and whatever best fits my take on the task at hand is what will be most appropriate for me to use. Of course this may be limited by factors such as customers requirements or qualifications of my coworkers - but you get my point.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

unix? — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:50:23 GMT

Validation in RoR is very simple. ActiveRecord is very nice and a capable O/R-Mapper.

But the testing features are the best. You can easily make unit-tests with fixtures (defined in YAML or CSV files) which will be written into your test database.
You can test your controllers very easily - because it is well integrated. In the coming 1.1 release you get easy integration testing features too.

AJAX support is integrated with ruby code.

MVC is very clear and easy to use - and you get a good design of your web application.

Caching functionality is easy to use.

It´s a collection of best practices for OO agile development. The point is that a normal developer does not care about complex persistence, caching, testing, ... topics. The developer can have the focus on the domain of the application.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

W3bbo — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:05:39 GMT

Eirik wrote:

I'm not actually sure which CreateObject/GetObject you are referring to as I don't do ASP.NET (so I am not arguing in any direction, just offering a Ruby / Rails perspective), but if it has something to do with OLE objects you could do this in your Rails app

CreateObject/GetObject are left-overs from VB Sripting days, (I meant to type "To my knowledge, RoR doesn't support COM/DCOM" but I was half-asleep at the time).

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

mrichman — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:41:19 GMT

cravikiran wrote:

After my run with RoR, I played around with ASP.NET 2.0. My thought the whole time was similar ... where are the blog in 2 min (or 5 or 10 or w/e the RoR demo was) demos on this? Cause really, its a whole lot easier with ASP.NET 2.0 than in RoR. Its practically no code - all the controls are drag and droppable. Now, the biggest thing is that when you want to come back and do a real app in ASP.NET 2.0 after the initial wowing, you still can! You are the ones writing the SQL statements for the data sources (with tools to make it quick) and caching is very easy to implement. A lot of the plumbing is there for logins, user management, site navigation, etc, etc. And with all of it, if you need to, the provider model is easy to customize as you like...maybe someone should do the 2-5 min "demo" for ASP.NET 2.0.

This captures the essence of the point I was trying to make! Will someone on the ASP.NET team (ScottGu) please post a "Blog from scratch in 5 minutes with ASP.NET 2.0" video (and others!)

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

W3bbo — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:54:58 GMT

mrichman wrote:

This captures the essence of the point I was trying to make! Will someone on the ASP.NET team (ScottGu) please post a "Blog from scratch in 5 minutes with ASP.NET 2.0" video (and others!)

I could give it a shot, but in ASP.NET1.1 (I'm not fully comfortable with ASP.NET2.0 yet). It does mean I'll have to re-install Camtasia again though.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Froogle — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:30:24 GMT

"While Ruby On Rails may seem to allow one to get a simple app up and running quickly...."

Hmmm interesting comment. I'm a big .NET and Microsoft fan - I've written 12 books on this stuff, BUT 37 Signals definately have Microsoft beat soundly with the Rails framework. Here is a team of something like 7 guys that in 2 years have managed to release 4 enterprise grade online apps, and the rails framework, and pick up useability awards and enter profitability on the way. 2 years!

They even wrote a book about it and it's on their site 37signals.com.

Personally, after spending some time with Ruby on Rails, I find much to vehemently dislike in ASP.NET. The cost, the lack of tight integration with AJAX (yes, I know about ATLAS but I wouldn't consider it's coupling to ASP.NET to be 'tight'), the phenomenal ORM that is ActiveRecord. Microsoft could learn a lot from these guys.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

mrichman — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 16:20:42 GMT

Cost? ASP.NET is free. Of course, the Windows license is not, and neither is Visual Studio. You can, however, download Visual Web Developer for free.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

unix? — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:12:00 GMT

it is gratis. not free like freedom. if Micosoft says any day that they want to have money for this product all people using this gratis software will get a problem. it is more than a free beer not like freedom but this is a topic many people does not understand and it is not the issue of this thread.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

mrichman — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:06:41 GMT

Freedom isn't free either.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

W3bbo — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 19:05:11 GMT

mrichman wrote:

Freedom isn't free either.

Right, you have to pay taxes to support the state which imposes freedom. Hence why all those who argue that only Anarchy is the true freedom are wrong.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

TrevorD — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:37:50 GMT

W3bbo wrote:

Right, you have to pay taxes to support the state which imposes freedom. Hence why all those who argue that only Anarchy is the true freedom are wrong.

Right. Another thing that I know is true: There are absolutely no absolutes.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

W3bbo — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:31:01 GMT

TrevorD wrote:

Right. Another thing that I know is true: There are absolutely no absolutes.

...And 76.4 percent of all statistics are made-up, oh and all generalisations are wrong

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

unix? — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 07:24:28 GMT

It is nice to see that the yield keyword in C# 2.0 is coming from such modern languages like Ruby.

I have seen drafts of the C# 3.0 future and want to say that more and more is coming from languages like Ruby. e.g. Extensions in C# 3.0 are like mixins in Ruby. And you do not need to specify the type all the time. I think that will be the right direction.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:09:35 GMT

Balupton and W3bbo, ASP.NET is really nearly 9 (nine!) years old by now! It is not because we only got it in 2001 that Microsoft didn't use it internally long before that date.

From an interview with Scott Guthrie: "We started the development of ASP.NET in 1997->1998"
The first version already ran that new year's weekend 1997-1998...

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

W3bbo — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:47:19 GMT

dotnetjunkie wrote:

From an interview with Scott Guthrie: "We started the development of ASP.NET in 1997->1998"
The first version already ran that new year's weekend 1997-1998...

I suspect that would have been a compiled version or ASP-like functionality available ("Controls"), perhaps via a "proper" API available to any language, certainly nothing like the ASP.NET we have today that is fully managed and OOP.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

unix? — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 07:29:53 GMT

School portal migrates from .NET to RoR:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1935376066;fp;16;fpid;0

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

grandy — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:31:40 GMT

I'm a fan of .net, but I recently got into RoR and here is the experience I had:

It was somewhat confusing until I read the Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails book. It is one of the best programming books I've ever read. It's clear and concise and explains things in a way that is suitable for all levels (if you're a guru you'll skim some chapters but you'll still be glad you read them)...

Rails is a highly productive system just like asp.net, but here are the differences:

With asp.net if you're writing a serious app that you want to be simple, conceptually clear, etc., you write data acccess classes with methods to handle the IO with the database. You then write your business logic classes that call upon the data access methods when necessary, and finally you write your user interface, which interacts with the business objects.

In asp.net doing all this requires a fair bit of thought and a lot of coding of very similar methods, particularly in the data access classes. I used to find this quite boring and often resorted to cutting and pasting code and doing search and replace when something changed.

In Rails you get ActiveRecord which creates all of those data access methods automatically. You can tell these "model" classes what fields are required, which are read only, etc. If you've seen the blogging application in the demo video, you've seen the has_many and belongs_to relationships. With Rails, rather than writing SQL joins you simply define these relationships once. Then, you can use object oriented syntax such as user.posts to grab a collection of all of a user's posts.   If you have a users table you have a User data access class automatically. If posts have a user_id, then you can call user.posts to find a list of posts.

With rails 1.1 (coming out in a few days) the power of this functionality has been increased DRASTICALLY to handle a lot more obscure kinds of joins automatically.

Rails gives you all this for free so you can focus on writing good business logic and maybe a few test cases too. Business logic in Rails is known as your "Controller" classes.   Look up MVC to see how they got that terminology.

On the "view" side you get a simple templating language very similar to asp and asp.net's, which is nice so there's virtually no learning curve.

As your app changes and you add more complexity and features, the standard layout of a Rails application makes this ultra easy to manage. You'll find (as I did in a HUGE way) that you'll be able to tackle projects that are bigger than those you'd have felt comfortable tackling using other platforms. Why? Because you'll know that you'll be able to think about designing the app rather than managing a bunch of files and data access methods.

The Ruby language example above is highly misleading. It's extremely easy to learn, and you can hold off on learning some of its more guru-oriented features, because it's unlikely that you'll need them for most web applications. Simple stuff like doing business logic, creating dynamic web pages, etc, is so easy that the Ruby syntax doesn't really even need to be taught. There are a handful of conventions that the book I recommended above dedicates a few pages to and that's all you need to worry about until you get to the point where you're bored some evening and want to learn about closures and duck typing, etc.

I've recently been looking into Scaling rails apps, and all it requires is a shared folder for storing session data and a standard stateless clustering system. You can even separate out different app servers if you want to and let your web server avoid that workload.   Setting this up is not plug and play, but it will be easy for anyone reading this forum.

The Ajax integration is also top notch and makes writing slick Ajax stuff absolutely cake. I'll let you discover this for yourself though, because I don't want to ruin the fun you'll have.

So my advice to you if you're curious about Rails is quite simple: Buy the Agile book. I got it for like $23 on Amazon.    If you're a guru you don't need this book, but I think it will save anyone time, since the tutorials that are on the web aren't really all that great, although this is changing. Also, download RadRails and check out the ctrl-shift-v feature.

One other note, rails gives you a real time development log that shows the exact queries that it's generating w/ ActiveRecord and their overall performance impact. If you see something that you want to change, you can simply write a method that uses hand-tuned SQL, or even just use SQL in one of the find methods that you get as part of ActiveRecord:

User.find_by_sql("SELECT blah blah outer join blah IN (SELECT blah)")

Oh and if you put the word breakpoint in your code there's a slick utility that lets you get full access to the running web app, this is every bit as slick as Visual Studio's debugging of web apps.

Now here is my fluff comment about Rails:

I think one of the best things about Rails is its aesthetics. The code looks great, is free of extra syntactic garbage, and you feel like you do when you use an iPod, like you're using something built with top-notch craftsmanship.

Also, the #rubyonrails channel on IRC has been a lot of help to me. If you're patient there is usually a guru in there who can help with most any question, though I recommend reading the Agile book first so that you'll have a bit more of a clue and avoid wasting too much time with the rather cryptic documentation at api.rubyonrails.com

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

justinperkins — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 08:20:31 GMT

unix? wrote:

It is nice to see that the yield keyword in C# 2.0 is coming from such modern languages like Ruby.

Not to be pedantic, but ruby got the yield thing from a language called CLU (I learned that while reading the PickAxe book (Ruby bible). Although still possible that C# got yield from Ruby, it seems more likely that it stemmed from the school of thought that subscribes to super high-level languages like CLU.

Rails piqued my interest last summer when the Agile book was still in PDF form, so I bought it. I didn't really get into Rails until the last few months, but I've completely switched from .NET and am never going back. I just got a job doing Rails development and I'm stoked about it.

I don't have any problem putting .NET and Java in the same category, they're found in most corp IT departments, running side-by-side. Their syntax is loosely similar and equally verbose. Their budgets are always bloated and development time is never short.

Ruby is simple and elegant. ActiveRecord kicks butt over all (who else can claim anything remotely similar, out of the box?).

There are other equally kickass frameworks, django is one (python MVC framework). They all have the same common goal: less code, shorter development, less bugs, happy coding. That's what drew my attention in the first place and after trying it out I couldn't go back.

I'm not a rails snob, just a "less development, less code, less bugs" person. Choose your MVC and have fun (C#/Java/PHP are _not_ fun).

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

kaveh.shahbazian@gmail.com — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:24:36 GMT

From 2002 untill now C#/ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0; windows application, compact .NET, web-services, SQL server and before 2002 VC++/MFC and ... I'v done.
So I know "microsoft" enough to speak about it.
Day by day something was comming close to me and at last I realized it. I am not programming; I am microsofting. I am doing stupid things just because microsoft does not want loose titely coupling between it's products.
I am a part of microsoft machine.
In less than 1 year I will no longer have anything microsoftish on my computer. I have strongly started that.
.NET seems good? Still to me? Yes! but my experiences with MS says to me that's just a new, huge, well managed kind of faking things.
If anyone wants going microsoftish - and there are enough - I do not care anymore.
No one likes to be used! Me too!

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Another_Darren — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:56:58 GMT

Harlequin wrote:

Just don't like the Ruby syntax, not very friendly to the eye

def bfs(e)
    q = []
    e.mark
    yield e
    q.push e
    while not q.empty?
        u = q.shift
        u.edge_iterator do |v|
        if not v.marked?
            v.mark
            yield v
            q.push v
        end
    end
end
bfs(e) {|v| puts v}

And you if typed out the same code in C# with not clear var names, no comments and no structure to the control or flow, it too would look horrible. Also remember it's not strongly typed so doesn't need all the extra code defining each var.

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Another_Darren — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:04:32 GMT

Harlequin wrote:

Ruby isn't compiled like .NET/Java is it?

If not, then it should be up against classic ASP/ColdFusion/PHP...

Why? It can achieve the same as ASP.NET?

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

nightski — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:46:14 GMT

Meh, Ruby is a nice language but RoR really doesn't excite me as much as LINQ and C# 3.0 does (ASP.NET Orcas has an OR mapper I believe also?).

Anyways, my question is what editor is he using on Mac OSX for that first tutorial? I *love* the color scheme & fonts it uses, and would like to configure VS to look like that

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Charles Himmer — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:37:01 GMT

nightski said:
Meh, Ruby is a nice language but RoR really doesn't excite me as much as LINQ and C# 3.0 does (ASP.NET Orcas has an OR mapper I believe also?).

Anyways, my question is what editor is he using on Mac OSX for that first tutorial? I *love* the color scheme & fonts it uses, and would like to configure VS to look like that

Textmate

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

Ion Todirel — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:03:21 GMT

chuckleberry said:

nightski said:

*snip*

Textmate

o_O

Tech Off - Ruby on Rails vs. ASP.NET Deathmatch!!!

tones411 — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:33:11 GMT

cravikiran said:
Its going to have opinion and bias mixed in (plus its been a few months since I touched RoR) but heres my take :

As I learned about RoR and started doing the basic stuff thats in the Shock and Awe demos, I was like wow - this is really cool. I have to say the MVC implementation is good.

But when I decided to try a real application, I got really frustrated by how little control I had over key areas like the SQL statements being issued. I know I know... David says performance shouldnt be a concern, etc (I may be putting words in his mouth but thats how it stuck as to his opinion on it). In real world apps, effective SQL and being able to cache, etc. is important.

After my run with RoR, I played around with ASP.NET 2.0. My thought the whole time was similar ... where are the blog in 2 min (or 5 or 10 or w/e the RoR demo was) demos on this? Cause really, its a whole lot easier with ASP.NET 2.0 than in RoR. Its practically no code - all the controls are drag and droppable. Now, the biggest thing is that when you want to come back and do a real app in ASP.NET 2.0 after the initial wowing, you still can! You are the ones writing the SQL statements for the data sources (with tools to make it quick) and caching is very easy to implement. A lot of the plumbing is there for logins, user management, site navigation, etc, etc. And with all of it, if you need to, the provider model is easy to customize as you like.

That definitely sounds biased but thats how I honestly feel about it: They've done good with RoR's marketing (the "demos") but beyond basics, it really disappoints. Not so with ASP.NET 2.0 - only thing is maybe someone should do the 2-5 min "demo" for ASP.NET 2.0.

It's longer than 5 to 10 minutes, but check out this video about a Dynamic Data Website in ASP.net:

http://www.asp.net/learn/3.5-SP1/video-433.aspx

For more videos on the subject, go here: http://www.asp.net/learn/3.5-SP1/ and scroll down to the section titled "ASP.net Dynamic Data".