The Business of Software

I'm currently building my second mISV, first time round I used C#, ASP.NET and Java to create a wrapper around VSS to allow users to us VSS over the internet from any platform. Although this application has served me well and enabled me to build a business (and pay the bills), It took a long time to develop, about 12 months.

For my second offering I decided to use Ruby On Rails. Now, after a very small learning curve I feel as if I'm at least 4x more productive than I was in C# which means I'm able to get to market much faster, and squeeze much more functionality into v1.0 then I previously would have.

Do any of you guys plan on using more productive environments like Rails, for your web applications?

I tried Rails before and it felt like php (editing in Notepad and using command-line tools). When Rails comes up with an IDE like Visual Studio + Intellisense, I'll consider it.

I use Netbeans 6 (milestone 9 or 10), now it isn't Visual Studio but its not far off.

I would hardly call ROR more productive than ASP.NET with Subsonic, but hey, if it works for you go for it :-)

I did a small project with ROR just to see what the hype is all about and while I did like some aspects of it, like AJAX integration and Active Record, I really, really disliked writing code in Notepad (TextMate) without auto-completion, integrated debugger etc.

ASP.NET with Subsonic is far better and faster development platform than ROR in my humble opinion.

I might be old school but ROR just did not sit with me... I remember when everyone was up in arms about no types in VBScript. Now in Ruby it is love fest :-)

"Do any of you guys plan on using more productive environments like Rails, for your web applications?"

Isn't that kind of like asking when you stopped beating your wife?  :)

When adopting any new technology, there is an economic cost. For most mISVs, that cost is trivial. For most corporations, that cost is extremely significant. So the short answer is, yes, we do plan to upgrade and improve our productivity once it becomes economical to do so, or the decision is forced upon us.

Yes, we looked at Ruby on Rails. We decided not to use it because excluding the actual setup and configuration times (which admittingly isn't much for Rails), we would only save a few days off of an otherwise month long project. The savings over three-four days wasn't worth introducing yet another platform to support into our environment.

Right now, we're reserving RoR for quick one-off projects with a limited shelf life such that we don't have to worry about keeping everything up to date and patched.

I used C#, ASP.NET and Java to create a wrapper around VSS to allow users to us VSS over the internet from any platform. Although this application has served me well...

Uh...

Okay. Now, why exactly would someone get in bed with such a Frankenstein (and pay money!) rather than, you know, use subversion? I'm just curious.

[Maybe next time throw in a little Wasabi, huh?]

http://sourcegear.com/sos/index.html

Netbeans is good, but a little heavy. Aptana is another good option, not as powerful, but definitely lighter.

I've recently switched to pseudo-full-time Rails development after using it on a couple projects, including one 'enterprise' project (as opposed to the lollipop/Web 2.0 apps that seem to be commonly associated with Rails).  I've really found it to be very  productive, both for smaller *and* larger apps. 

Most of the claimed productivity gains are related to the Rails framework itself.  However, I've found this productivity to be amplified further by the community/plugin support.  Firstly, there's a plugin for just about everything you can imagine.  Secondly, plugins are *extremely* easy to use/get started with.

I looked at Ruby on Rails.  Some nice features, but as others have said, I need my GUI to develop apps.  Maybe Sapphire on Sails will solve the GUI issue?

We found significant gains in development time when using RoR for a basic CRUD web app about 18 months ago.  We were previously developing in Java/J2EE.  However, our clients needs became more complex and required considerable integration work with SOAP interfaces and we came unstuck using SOAP under ruby.  Lots of small incompatibilities and gotchas which sapped time - not helped by the fact that were were not Ruby experts. 

We also spent a lot of time trying to get the thing to behave correctly in a production environment although I believe these issues would be sorted by now.  However, there is an abundance of information on getting J2EE containers to perform while there wasn't so much about RoR when I last looked.

Have you looked into Zope. I know it isn't the new pretty girl on the block but it works great and is rock solid.

If you are curious look at http://oodt.jpl.nasa.gov/better-web-app.mov

My team reviewed several different technologies for our next app and you can't beat zope for cost savings and the fact that it allows you to use standard web design tools to create the base website and incorporate the site easily into the app. This allowed us to outsource the web look and feel while developing the application in house.

PS: That new Ruby girl isn't that cute or bright. Just try making something a little more complicated than the standard examples that are posted to the web.

No I haven't tried Zope, but I will take a look.

I'd like to think the project I'm working on now is a little more complex the samples on the RubyOnRails site (if thats what your talking about), and given that I'm almost at the end of my v1.0 development cycle I don't think I'm going to hit any gotcha's (fingers crossed).

no

Next project is Ruby on Rails.  There is a learning curve with any language.  The learning curve for this one was comparable to the one for C# to me, which is pretty odd considering I'm a Java programmer by training and before I started this project I didn't know what MVC stood for and couldn't write a single line of SQL.  I rather appreciate being straightjacketed.  ;)

There ARE some gotchas in Rails that don't need to be there.  Undebuggable errors which are only mentioned in the books.  ("If you forget your Javascript include tag, be prepared to waste an hour wondering WTheck went wrong.")  Inconsistent use of nomenclature (build = new != create EXCEPT when those aren't true).  Developing to hit a moving target -- gem/plugin support is wonderful but many of them are so early in their software development cycle that you have no assurance they will not be merged with another project or deprecated before you launch.  Terrible performance of key "this is the way to do it in Ruby" constructs, like say Array.collect, when used on sizeable sets of records.  Completely different interfaces for Date vs Time, and widespread headaches in moving data between the two.

That being said, it DOES work with things substantially harder than "Hey, lets build a blog in fifteen minutes".

Before I started using Rails I looked like this:
http://sacandolavuelta.bitacoras.com/nerd.jpg

Now I look like this:
http://flickr.com/photos/46457493@N00/230534494/

Incidentally this is a slide that was up for about three minutes at the Canada on Rails Conf from one of the creators of Rails. It was his answer for people who don’t get the "Rails way" of doing things…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetargon/127984254/

BTW I am switching to Cake PHP. Hah!

I haven't "switched" (as I haven't started an mISV just yet) but I'm more than likely going to use RoR to develop it (whatever "it" ends up being).  I'm only starting to learn the intricacies of Rails - I've played through the books and worked along with the tutorial apps, but nothing "real" just yet.

I just had a look at Subsonic.  This looks a lot like LLBLGen Pro except for it generates the code on the fly and it is not strongly typed.  LLBLGen requires a tool to generate the code, but it is strongly typed.  I've been using that package quite happily for years, but always have my eye out for something better (although I keep a close eye on linq).  Can someone who's used LLBLGen and Subsonic offer a comparison?

I have looked at SubSonic and I think its a really good solution for .NET developers however, it's not a patch on ActiveRecord.

We use Zope right now for a couple of large sites. However Zope has one huge draw back that is causing us to move on to something else (probably Django). That draw back is the lack of ability to use source control with it. All your code lives in the object DB and it tracks changes for you...but has very few source code control features like branches and what not.

I'm not switching... because I switched two years ago. :)

I might look into it - I want to build an app to run on iPhone and it seems like that would be a good excuse to get into it.

damn i love this forum

"it felt like php (editing in Notepad and using command-line tools)"

You can't be serious. Why use notepad for PHP? at the very least use UltraEdit to get code formatting/colors. But I would recommend Eclipse + PDT, which is a full IDE with source control support, built-in ANT build tool, remote debugger, etc..... And it's as free as notepad.

I'm not switching to RR because PHP is widely supported and "proven", stable, and there are some fine frameworks to use with it if you feel the need to use one.

You may be interested in QCodo if you're doing a CRUD app.

You might also want to look at CodeIgniter. They have a very nice PHP framework that has many of the niceties of RoR.

http://www.codeigniter.com

Or try the Symfony PHP framework (www.symfony-project.com), which is used, amongst others, by Yahoo. I like it a lot, plus the devs promise a 2 year maintenance cycle of stable releases, which is one of my main concerns.