Relative power of Rails vs C#

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello,

We have a quality, but farily small, rails backed site running that I developed last summer. The site is currently in our svn repo, and we use capistrano to deploy to our linux based web server. The site is rock solid, and the development effort was moderate. In fact, it was actually a pleasure to build.

Now, we want to build a much larger site, both in terms of capabilities of the site and the number of users. We have some consultants recommending C# as the dev language of choice, a language and dev environment with which I am not familiar. Can anyone comment on the relative power of Rails vs C#? Anyone know of any feature comparisons?

I'm sure this site will need more than one developer for the initial build. However, there is some concern here over whether Rails developers are available. Is there a ready market for Rails developers?

Thank you.

Regards, Rich

2

theduz wrote:

We have a quality, but farily small, rails backed site running that I developed last summer. The site is currently in our svn repo, and we use capistrano to deploy to our linux based web server. The site is rock solid, and the development effort was moderate. In fact, it was actually a pleasure to build.

That's a good sign - the pleasure part.

Now, we want to build a much larger site, both in terms of capabilities of the site and the number of users. We have some consultants recommending C# as the dev language of choice, a language and dev environment with which I am not familiar. Can anyone comment on the relative power of Rails vs C#? Anyone know of any feature comparisons?

They are reciting MS's FUD doctrines - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. So if MS is big, then their products must be scalable. "If you go with one of those hare-brained Open Source solutions, then it might be fun to code with, but after you get bigger it will probably run slower!" etc...

I'm sure this site will need more than one developer for the initial build. However, there is some concern here over whether Rails developers are available. Is there a ready market for Rails developers?

Rails will probably require fewer coders, and fewer lines of code, to get more done.

Rails follows the well-understood LAMP profile of scaling. Amazon, Google, and Yahoo all use Linux Apache MySQL and Perl/Python/PhP - or their close equivalents. To scale, you add more servers. They are cheaper than programmers.

3

perhaps this is interesting for you. http://www.castleproject.org/monorail/index.html

it's an MVC Web Framework for .NET, inspired by ActionPack. Runs with .NET on Windows and with mono Linux.

i have no experience with it. but perhaps it's usefull.

perhaps these are interesting too: http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/ruby_vs_aspnet_1.htm http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/aspnet_ruby_agility.htm

HTH

4

I use both, C# and Ruby on Rails and I must say it is not an easy task to compare them. We use C# for desktop and Web application development and in resent months we also introduce the Rails and FLEX.

To tell you the bare truth it is not the language but the people that maters. There are far more C# developers on the market but one enthusiastic Rails developer is almost priceless. Most Rais people are very enthusiastic. The Rail is new and fun anybody that invest in it seams to me like passionate programmer. C# programming is very often become just a job.

If you ask Consultants they will probably tell you the most used mediocre solution. It is a safety answer that will lead you nowhere. Even so, they are not saying the truth. Most software is still in jsp and php.

Rails and Ruby has a greatest momentum and that is something that encourages me to do my web projects in Rails.

Find the right people and you can not make a wrong decision or the shitty web application.

dima

5

Now, we want to build a much larger site, both in terms of capabilities of the site and the number of users. We have some consultants recommending C# as the dev language of choice, a language and dev environment with which I am not familiar.

Well you cannot trust consultants in that way. They may be recommending C# to you because they have spare C# developers and want to rent them to you for the implementation.

In fact recommending C# just seems downright odd. Surely they mean .NET? C# for web development? Its an odd choice surely ASP.NET is the primary part of the equation. Any C# stuff in there would be backbone components, which means that there is CPU processing going on there that is not building pages or hitting the database. It might also mean that you don't have a shared- nothing system. Its also not a thin stack. Both of these mean that you can hit scaling problems.

They also restrict your platform choice to windows? I thought you were using Linux? Mono (.NET on Linux) is great, but its about 18 months behind .NET 'classic'. I wouldn't consider it as my launch platform. Mono is your safety net, when your windows only .NET application attracts the interest of a Linux customer.

Can anyone comment on the relative power of Rails vs C#? Anyone know of any feature comparisons?

You are not comparing like with like. Rails is a web framework, implemented in Ruby - a programming language. C# is a programming language, not normally associated with Web Development, except through .NET framework. Its close enough to Java with some nice additions. That does mean that it is far more verbose than you would like for a big site. You really always want the RAD aspects of the system, like UI, web pages to be written in less verbose, quicker to market languages, like PHP, perl, VB, ASP etc.

I'm sure this site will need more than one developer for the initial build.

How big is the site? What time frame do you have? Rails party piece is getting the initial build ready. With a .NET (or ahem C#) solution there will be a lot more coding and time spent before anything is visible.

However, there is some concern here over whether Rails developers are available. Is there a ready market for Rails developers?

Depends where you are. Its pretty tight. If you find a Rails developer though, you know they can do the job. If you look for C# developers, you don't automatically get web development experience.

Your best bet is to train internally.