ASP.NET MVC is closer to other development frameworks, so it’s not that difficult to jump back and forth. If you are already comfortable with .NET then ASP.NET MVC is the obvious choice. It’s all about productivity.

I’ve done some Rails and although it’s nice, I was already familiar with CakePHP, so that was my obvious choice.

Good luck!

These are a few remarks that I’d like to add :
- Ruby is an amazing programming language that involves agile development methods that will rock your world (if you have time look at Rspec and Cucumber)
- It has a quite small learning curve
- Rails has a huge and friendly community
- Using Linux or Mac OSX makes your life easier when you work daily with Ruby
- You’ll never loose your time learning Ruby, it can always make you better developer to learn a new language!

Have fun!

Both Rails and .NET frameworks can easily support your requirements. If you’re going to spend the time to develop your application, I would ask myself … which tool do I most enjoy working with? Maybe this is a good excuse for you to take the time to learn Rails so you can use it on future projects (Rails is a great tool to be familiar with for rapidly developing web applications). Maybe you have a reason to continue using ASP.NET [MVC] and … that might be the right tool.

I use Rails because:
– It’s significantly faster / easier to create Rails applications than ASP.NET apps
– I love Ruby
– I enjoy programming with Ruby/Rails more than programming against the CLR (C#)

If you code your application in Rails, it will likely take less time to develop and you’ll end up with a smaller, more maintainable codebase.

In the end … it’s really up to you! This is coming from an ex-ASP.NET developer, now Rails developer.

Thank you

That said, it’s simply untrue to say that “Ruby on Rails is inherently slow” … RoR is **faster** than CakePHP. That’s not to say that CakePHP isn’t any good or that Rails is the best … but the fact remains: Rails is faster.

If you’re looking for a hackers web framework and you’re not quite satisfied with Rails, I would look into Merb. It’s simpler than Rails and much faster, too (*WAY* faster than CakePHP & CodeIgniter).

– Less speed, more expenses. If I purchase an expensive dedicated server to support the technology, it shouldn’t be slow. If I buy cheap hosting for php, it will be ok. If I purchase a dedicated host for php… It should be very fast!
– Pain of learning a new language. I admit I love to learn, but this is true that php is such a great language I could not avoid while building a web application.

So I go into your sense, even though RoR looks smart.

Ben’s last blog post..“Nous avons été visités” affirme un astronaute célèbre

Basically, when you use an application server, it loads up your application into memory so, whenever a user hits your site, the application is already loaded and can respond quickly. Typically, PHP isn’t done like that – each hit requires the full application to be loaded. Someone correct me if I’m wrong – there might be some caching that mod_php does but, basically, the whole app gets loaded once per request.

Typically, “the whole app” means a single PHP script for PHP, but for something like CakePHP or Rails, there’s way more than that … the environment might include the routes, the database connection objects, the template rendering engine(s) … all kinds of stuff.

Rails *CAN* be run on a shared host perfectly well using any kind of *CGI, loading the full environment per request … but this is very slow, which is why ruby web frameworks typically use application servers, so everything’s loaded up and can be *very* fast.

Luckily, for anyone interested in Rails development, there’s an Apache module (“mod_rails”) that can run ruby web frameworks, including Rails, and some shared hosts let you use this You might have to pay extra or upgrade your account on some hosts for this functionality, because of the memory usage, unfortunately. That’s why it’s conventional for Rails developers to run their apps on their “own” servers (VPSes).

[/ rails deployment rant ]

I love it when people assume that, because it’s written in PHP, CakePHP is faster than Ruby on Rails.

PHP is faster than Ruby. A *lot* faster.
Ruby on Rails is faster than CakePHP. About 15x.

Ruby is created to be dynamic – to be changed on the fly. Ruby is much faster when it comes to meta-programming and the like (the things that make Rails and CakePHP possible). PHP’s fibonacci sequence, on the other hand, is *way* faster than Ruby’s … for all the times you find yourself needing to do that!

I used to adore PHP so I’m not an outsider here, but I’m a Ruby on Rails professional now. For web application development, I find Ruby on Rails to be more productive than anything I’ve used but there are many great alternatives, like CakePHP. If it weren’t for the fact that I *love* Ruby (and RoR has a significantly larger community and is faster and whatnot), I would be just as happy to code in a framework build in PHP or Python or something.

Good points in the post – using something that you already know the language for is ideal! Anyone who’s interested, however … from the perspective of an ex-PHP coder … I love Rails and it’s worth trying out. There’s a LOT of demand for it right now, too.

RoR might be the best thing on Earth, but I have something very similar in an environment I’m familiar with, so why waste time!?

I have other things in my life, and PHP does the job. Period.

I haven’t gone into any specifics about code, structure, methodology, etc. Based on my comparison, all my reasons are VERY valid and I stick to them.

But as I’ve said: Your Choice of Web Development Framework Doesn’t Matter, no one cares one way or the other: CakePHP, CI, Ruby on Rails, it’s about getting a product up and running.