6 points by gleb 1 day ago | link While Ruby and Rails are slow, the issue is overblown. There is at most an order of magnitude difference between RoR and reasonable alternatives (php, python, etc.), and realistacally the difference is closer to a factor of 3. This might sound important, but there is bigger fish to fry when talking about performance. All of the above are dead slow, 3-4 orders of magnitude slower than optimal C implementation.
In a typical web app, HTTP optimization and doing O(1) queries rather O(n^2) per page is where performance lies. You can develop web apps quickly these days, and the code can be clean, but you end up going from Palo Alto to Menlo Park through Paris. Sure, a supersonic plane can do that route quicker than a handicapped turtle, but the trick is not going through Paris altogether. RoR makes rewring the code to avoid the Paris trip easy, fast and resulting code remains reasonably readable. And that's the holy grail.
Having said that, that 3x performance boost to RoR would sure be nice, and would put more areas of our application into "Roundtrip through Paris OK" category.
2 points by lupin_sansei 1 day ago | link "In a typical web app, HTTP optimization and doing O(1) queries rather O(n^2) per page is where performance lies"
Yes, I have found 99% of my speed increases from good database indexing and using hashtables to store data you need more than once.
3 points by steve 18 hours ago | link Indeed, databases are real root of all performance problems. I rewrote a site to use the database much less frequently (mostly just for the initial loading and write operations) and I've been incredibly satisfied with the results.
5 points by zurla 1 day ago | link my impression was that likebetter's troubles weren't really problems with rails so much as problems with their hosting co, bandwidth, and maybe the usual db scaling issues. correct me if I'm wrong, though.
2 points by bootload 1 day ago | link "... And there's no documentation to the point of seeming intentional ..."
Python documentation is on my continuous reading list & is one of the pluses for python usage. But lack of it hasn't stopped Rails adoption. Why? Is it that Rails is that simple to use (for experienced developers)?
8 points by mechanical_fish 11 hours ago | link There are several great Ruby and Rails books. The only "problem" is that many of them cost more than $0.
Some programmers think that $50 is a lot of money, but that time is basically free. Frankly, these people deserve PHP.
2 points by Readmore 1 day ago | link If you don't like Ruby no Rails don't use it. There doesn't have to be some religious debate every time someone 'takes it for a spin'. Ruby on Rails makes you more productive, end of story. (Edited to remove unnecessary flame. Sorry about that, it's been a long week.)
7 points by aston 1 day ago | link No need for personal attacks ("I don't think the authors rip off of hot or not with pictures of kittens is really a good use case for scaling a popular site." in case it disappears).
Also, I'll just point out that there is certainly a religion of RoR unlike that of any other web framework. Thus, whenever someone makes disparaging comments, some RoR fan takes serious offense. You seem like you were personally offended, for example.
2 points by Readmore 1 day ago | link I just get tired of everyone that writes a website becoming an authority on all things Internet related. That said, my comment was off the cuff and I'll retract it. I'm sorry if I hurt any feelings.
4 points by plusbryan 1 day ago | link And I get tired of people with 6 months RoR under their belt proselytizing it as the last word in programming languages. And in regards to the "omg you're just like hot or not!" comment, um, yeah, sure. Keep thinking that. Good.
-3 points by Readmore 1 day ago | link Fair enough, but I've been using RoR for 2 years and it is amazingly useful. It's a far better web programming environment than php or django. If you didn't like it that's cool, I really don't care, but don't submit your language bashing blog post to newsy. Also, it doesn't really matter if you're a rip off of hot or not as a user that's the first thing I thought as I clicked the back button away from your site.
6 points by jmzachary 1 day ago | link Geezus, the guy is entitled to an opinion about a technology that he has used to deploy a website. You must really care because you bothered to post some dickish response.
2 points by jamongkad 15 hours ago | link Same here with david. I was attracted to Rails and seeing that it's written in Ruby I decided to take the plunge. I agree with plusBryan that it is important to have many options.
Frameworks have their own strengths and weaknesses inherited from the languages used to build them.
So quit the hating, please I don't get why RoR dudes(not all of them in fairness) love to bash hackers using other languages or frameworks. Although blogs like this tend to bring out alot of passionate if not misguided individuals.
6 points by plusbryan 1 day ago | link If you actually read the post, you'd see my point is just to warn against the religious fanaticism that surrounds what is essentially a framework. More options are good, right?
4 points by willarson 1 day ago | link I don't think its so much a Rails issue as a Ruby issue. Of late a new breed of Rubyists has emerged, and they are surprisingly militant. Here's hoping its just a phase. More options are indeed good, ands its weird to see the users of a language heavily based off of perl decide that there is indeed only one solution to a problem. ;)
1 point by davidw 17 hours ago | link I was attracted to Ruby because of Rails, and while I like it a lot, I'm old enough, I guess, to not really get so wrapped up in any one language. I spent all that energy trying to push Tcl over the years.
Rails is great, though, the only things that seem to come close are the Python frameworks, and I think at that point it comes down to a question of taste, and I think I like Ruby more than Python (even though I've used Python since...'99? Before it was popular in any case).
2 points by ivan 1 day ago | link I agree that RoR made me productive. I produced so much custom functions (helpers) like never before in any other framework. Especially love pagination.
