7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_php??? what do you guys think of this?

I think he's a wanker.

What could he possibly not do in rails in 2 years that he could in PHP in 1 month?

It's this giant diatribe with ZERO real examples of why PHP is better for what he's doing.

And, the end all of it is, what? Rails isn't a giant hammer that will smash every nail? Like duh, obviously.

Oh, and will someone explain why he writes the O'Reilly rails blog when he had to HIRE someone to code rails for him?

Last edited by BJClark (2007-09-24 15:44:34)

Moved to General Discussion

I read about it on slashdot first, which was a complete flamebait. Saw an interesting comment there, though. Compare the headlines in that comment to the headlines of the actual article, and Alas!

Also, the author sort of agreed on this. After all the flames and foos and bars, he replied to the slashdot article himself. As he says, he was trying to make rails do something it wasn't meant to do. No wonder he switched back!

People really blow these types of articles and debates out of proportion. This guy is partially to blame by writing such an incendiary title.. to most folks it sounds like he is saying "I tried to use Rails and it sucked so now I'm using PHP, which is much better"

But read the article and you will see that his problem was dealing with a MASSIVE legacy database and admittedly not understanding how Rails works. He complains about not being able to use SQL transparently in Rails, obviously he never used the execute_sql command which has been in ActiveRecord since forever.

At the end of the day, if PHP works better for him, then that's awesome. Personally, I found the language quite repulsive and counter-intuitive, but that's just me.

If you are a fence-sitter who cant decide what language to use on a project, then you need to try making something simple in both languages and then decide what works better for you.

I tried PHP, C# and Python before settling on the sweet simplicity of Ruby and Rails.

Some say choose the best tool for the job, I say choose the best one for your brain.

I think DHH's response (or what I take to be his response) makes a lot of sense: http://loudthinking.com/posts/13-thinki … ig-rewrite

The switch back to PHP had more to do with The Big Rewrite than with Ruby/Rails itself.

That being said, he's right that PHP might be more flexible than Rails - but that might simply be because PHP is a language - not a framework written in a language. Notice that he didn't do his rewrite with Code Igniter or Cake PHP - he wanted to roll his own thing. Fair enough.

I am currently rewriting a large PHP site in Rails. It's almost done. Here's what I have to say about it:

1. It's 10x fewer lines of code.
2. That's even including the tests which the old site had none.
3. The logic is nicely packed into models, the old site everything was mixed together.
4. It's much more flexible and easier to add/change things.
5. Most importantly, it's fun to work on.

I don't know how you can't say that's better. For anyone attempting the same thing, here's what I have to say:

1. Big rewrites are scary, only do it if you really need to. Estimate the time you think it will take and double that.
2. Don't try to keep the same database schema, url structure, etc. (anything Rails has an opinion about).
3. However, keep the same feature set, requirements, and interface. Don't try to add anything significant during the rewrite. If you need to change something, only do it because it'll make things easier.
4. Follow the Rails conventions, don't fight it!

It sounded like these issues all played a part in his big rewrite.