is whether Ruby (and Rails) are tied to or otherwise dependent on FastCGI
From what I've seen, the only two supported deployment options are FastCGI and mod_ruby. The problem with the latter is that all applications share a single interpreter. So when Ruby loads a class, the class initialization affects all active applications.
same might be said of English, Latin, French and Russian, but those languages seem to have survived
It's not like people chose a language to speak when they're born. :) There's built-in inertia. In any case, I think software is much more sensitive to syntactical mistakes.
the question is whether accepting the burden of a complex syntactical structure offers some significant advantage in dealing with certain types of problems
A think you could make the case that just about anything can help you with certain kinds of problems. :)
I'm exploring Ruby now because I got a taste of building an interactive web site with PHP, MySQL and Javascript in the past year.
If you're taking about using PHP's procedural API, and JavaScript written from scratch, I agree. I use PHP as a low-level foundation for my framework because it's very easy to deploy and is ridiculously fast. I also think Smarty adds a lot of value.
the Scriptaculous Javascript library is looking more and more like a useful toolbox to me.
I hadn't heard of this -- thanks for pointing this out. It looks like it's based on Prototype, which is indeed a good library. Neither have to be used with Ruby, of course.
Aside from FastCGI, what other tools in the Ruby/Rails toolbox need to be replaced to produce a dependable, scalable Web platform? What is the likely cost of adopting the replacement? Who's working on that part of the solution?
The two issues I've seen so far are deployment and the (apparent) lack of a Smarty-like templating engine. I'm not sure what you're asking with the other questions.
by Scott Stevenson — Jul 03
From what I've seen, the only two supported deployment options are FastCGI and mod_ruby. The problem with the latter is that all applications share a single interpreter. So when Ruby loads a class, the class initialization affects all active applications.
same might be said of English, Latin, French and Russian, but those languages seem to have survived
It's not like people chose a language to speak when they're born. :) There's built-in inertia. In any case, I think software is much more sensitive to syntactical mistakes.
the question is whether accepting the burden of a complex syntactical structure offers some significant advantage in dealing with certain types of problems
A think you could make the case that just about anything can help you with certain kinds of problems. :)
I'm exploring Ruby now because I got a taste of building an interactive web site with PHP, MySQL and Javascript in the past year.
If you're taking about using PHP's procedural API, and JavaScript written from scratch, I agree. I use PHP as a low-level foundation for my framework because it's very easy to deploy and is ridiculously fast. I also think Smarty adds a lot of value.
the Scriptaculous Javascript library is looking more and more like a useful toolbox to me.
I hadn't heard of this -- thanks for pointing this out. It looks like it's based on Prototype, which is indeed a good library. Neither have to be used with Ruby, of course.
Aside from FastCGI, what other tools in the Ruby/Rails toolbox need to be replaced to produce a dependable, scalable Web platform? What is the likely cost of adopting the replacement? Who's working on that part of the solution?
The two issues I've seen so far are deployment and the (apparent) lack of a Smarty-like templating engine. I'm not sure what you're asking with the other questions.