the deployment side of it that bothers me. I see people talking about switching to lighthttp or some other server just so they can use RoR. I see a FAQ page that actually has a question about how to have more than
one Rails application on a single server. If that question even has to be asked, it seems something is wrong. If RoR is so specialized that the most common web server in use (Apache) isn’t in the first choices for
hosting, something seems wrong.
It often is the first choice, whether via FastCGI, mod_proxy_balancer, or even mod_ruby. Rails scales best as a pool of Ruby processes, so running a cluster of FastCGI instances or proxying a pack of Mongrel makes a lot sense.
A quick (and it was very quick) google shows me that there are alternatives. There are frameworks for Python and Perl … and I’d be
surprised if a closer look wouldn’t show more frameworks for Ruby and any other languages that have a current following (I guess that rules out Cobol ). Considering what appears to be the deployment problems
of RoR, why is this a good / better general purpose framework. If I’m wrong about the deployment problems, I’m willing to learn.
You haven’t actually stated any deployment problems. What’s wrong with Rails deployment is that it’s a little bit different and therefore scary. Wait until you get to what’s right: migrations and Capistrano. Good luck.
jeremy