I have used PHP over the last three years to build a fairly complex, high
traffic and quite profitable web-based CRM-like application in the education
market. It served me well in the early stages of the business because we
were able to get new features out very rapidly and scaling for traffic has
been no problem. But I have to say I think the biggest weakness is in
scaling with the complexity of your application. That's why I'm on this
mailing list right now. I'm looking at Ruby and specifically RoR as a way to
maintain the agility that comes from using a dynamic language but gain some
structure and a greater power to manage an increasingly complex domain
model. The PHP community has been pushing toward more "best practices" like
test-driven development, design patterns, etc., but this is a relatively
recent thing and while PHP allows you to do these things, it doesn't
necessarily make them easy or natural. You can do a lot of things with PHP
or any language if you're smart enough, but that doesn't mean you should if
there are other tools for the job that are more productive. Getting more
productivity out of my development team is a much bigger business issue for
me right now than scaling to handle more traffic. It all depends on what
your ultimate goal is. I'm a Ruby Nuby so don't take my word for it, but so
far I'm pretty excited by what I've found both in terms of the language
itself and the community behind it, relative to my experience with PHP.


On 7/16/05 11:03 AM, "Tristan Knowles" <cydonia_1 / yahoo.com> wrote:

> I was chatting with a PHP dev friend tonight, he is a
> PHP die hard who thinks it can do anything.
> 
> Now, I am new to Ruby and programming in general, and
> wasn't really able to offer any insightful reasons why
> he should at least look at Ruby.  So, I was wondering
> if I could get some ammo for next time, especially
> from people with a PHP background.
> 
> I don't mean the title in a literal sense, I'm more
> after some general points about Ruby which distinguish
> it from PHP.
> 
> I dropped the whole OO vs not true OO but he claimed
> PHP has been OO since v3.
> 
> Any comments with regards to this?  Point me in the
> right direction if its been brought up a million times...:)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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