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Rails can make you a better programmer!

September 23, 2007

More and more programmers are switching from legacy languages to Ruby on Rails.  Our own Big in Japan team works exclusively in the rails programming framework.  Derek Sivers dumped PHP two years ago in favor of Ruby on Rails.  Yesterday he wrote a post titled, "Seven reasons I switched back to PHP after two years on Rails."  Derek switch from PHP because his PHP code looked like crap.  Over the past two years Rails Derek realized he had become a better programmer.  Turns out his PHP code didn’t have to look like crap, his new PHP code looks great.  Did PHP get better or did he?  He explains,

Rails was an amazing teacher. I loved it’s “do exactly as I say” paint-by-numbers framework that taught me some great guidelines. I love Ruby for making me really understand OOP. God, Ruby is so beautiful. I love you, Ruby. But the main reason that any programmer learning any new language thinks the new language is SO much better than the old one is because he’s a better programmer now! You look back at your old ugly PHP code, compared to your new beautiful Ruby code, and think, “God that PHP is ugly!” But don’t forget you wrote that PHP years ago and are unfairly discriminating against it now. It’s not the language (entirely). It’s you, dude. You’re better now. Give yourself some credit.

Turns out Rails might be a great framework to adopt, but it might be a great way to improve your programming skills in any language. My thoughts: If you are a manager it is much easier to manage resources coding using Rails.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog 

Comments

3 Responses to “Rails can make you a better programmer!”

  1. Howard Rauscher Says:
    September 24th, 2007 at 10:08 am

    Why did he switch back to php after he ditched it?

  2. Cdbaby.com Abandons Rails Says:
    September 25th, 2007 at 7:35 pm

    [...] CDBaby.com has switched back to PHP from Rails… but with a catch. Derek silvers says that PHP would do what he wanted just fine with his new-found Rails programming skills. Texas Startup Blog covered this last week. Filed Under PHP, Punditry [...]

  3. Alex Leverington Says:
    September 26th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    This article caught my attention as well. There is great value in PHP which maybe underestimated at first. PHP at it’s core, is basically a macro language for C. This is good, because as we all know, compiling something in C results in a very fast application. Getting the same speed out of Ruby is simply impossible at this time; this will be different with Ruby2. The point here is that PHP is just as capable as Ruby - it’s just a lower level language and you have to work more to get the same result; however, the advantage is that it will be faster and possibly more capable. The exception to this rule is if you require advanced OO design patterns - in which case PHP will likely hurt your feelings and always remind you of how beautiful Ruby is.

    That said, I would argue with Derek in that his reasons were centered around limitations of his existing infrastructure and time-to-market demands. Taking this into consideration, a good question to ask is why he couldn’t use Ruby and if he were better off in the long run using a language that’s well suited for agile development and a team of more than 2 developers. Moreover, how will his choice of programming language affect his ability to keep up with his competitors?

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