On 26 Sep 2007, at 05:36, John Joyce wrote:

> On Sep 25, 2007, at 7:28 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>
>> Chad Perrin wrote:
>>> I had a forehead-smacking moment while reading that, where I  
>>> realized
>>> that *of course* it's true that after two years of not getting  
>>> anything
>>> substantially right, there's obviously something else wrong besides
>>> choosing the wrong tool (if it's wrong for that purpose at all,  
>>> which
>>> does not appear to be a settled matter from where I'm sitting).
>>>
>>> Hell, two years should be enough time to get something working in  
>>> COBOL,
>>> let alone Rails.
>>
>> I don't think it was a matter of not getting something working --  
>> IIRC
>> CD Baby did *work* when it was in Rails. In reality, I think it  
>> was that
>> he didn't understand MVC, Ruby or Rails when he started the  
>> migration --
>> it just looked cool, so he went out and hired a Rails programmer  
>> to do it.

> Question is, why is his site important enough to warrant him  
> writing on anything?
> It's still a crappy looking site, always has been. I could care  
> less what he has to say for or against a language or framework.  
> (which he can't seem to understand the difference or separation  
> between) He did say he was not fond of frameworks. So he sticks to  
> PHP alone which is a mishmash of functions.
> I don't think that guy is qualified to say much about building  
> software.
> 2 years to rebuild in Rails?! How?! Simple. You can't force an  
> existing database structure onto a framework that has an ORM.  
> Doesn't work well if at all.
> You can migrate the data. easy.

There is a lot of things that can go wrong when you do a rewrite,  
especially when you do a rewrite in a new language and framework.

In this particular case, from what I understand was the main problem  
was basically that he had a working platform in PHP, and he wanted to  
improve that. His experience from building the system in PHP would  
help immensely if he would rewrite it in... PHP. With Rails, I  
suspect his PHP experience would work against him, both leading him  
towards solutions more suitable for PHP than Rails, and also  
effectively steering him away from the easiest Rails-like solutions.

In addition he had problems getting the other systems - already tuned  
for use with his old PHP code - to play with Rails. Again this is  
only natural if you have built a significantly large system already.

These two factors alone can explain why building the system in Rails  
took so long.

So I think there's no need to be so judgemental here. I didn't feel  
it was a criticism against Ruby, just a warning that even the best  
regarded framework isn't a guarantee for success, and you should go  
into everything with your eyes wide open.

So no need to be rude to him.


/Christoffer