Jimmy Z

[Update for all visitors: I’ve written a new post name Why I Prefer Ruby on Rails over CakePHP. Please visit that for a more up to date opinion.]

In response to Blake’s question on my last post “Why I Like CakePHP”, the main reason is that I still use CakePHP over Ruby on Rails is availability of php programmers. It’s a lot easier to find someone who does php than it is to find someone who does Ruby.

Also, if we are building projects that will eventually be deployed on a client’s server, the client will eventually need to maintain it. It is easier for them to support a php solution over a Ruby on Rails solution because because they will find more people familiar with php than ruby.

For a comparison of language popularity, although I realize this doesn’t say it all, here is a Google Trends chart comparing php with ruby.

PHP is in blue, and Ruby is in red.

Now I admit that Ruby on Rails is a superior product over CakePHP. Rails was built for a language like Ruby, not for php. However, php does a good enough job with handling the Rails-like MVC framework. All that said, I wish Ruby was more popular because it would be fun to jump into.

It seems that a lot of the php community, including myself, have become very framework-centric. I think this stems from frustrating hours/days/weeks of digging through spaghetti code, trying to debug php applications.

Because of the immense popularity of php, I think one of the php MVC frameworks will catch fire and surpass Rails in popularity.

Tagged with: CakePHP, rails, ruby

About two months ago, I was introduced to CakePhp, a Ruby-on-Rails-inspired php framework. After studying the various rails-inspired php frameworks, I decided that Cake was the way to go. My experience has been great, although there have been some bumps along the road.
For almost a year, I had been wanting to dive into Ruby-on-Rails. I had successfully completed a few Rails tutorials, but, at the time I didn’t program in Ruby. Therefore the lines were blurred as to what was being done by Ruby and what was being done by Rails magic. CakePHP has provided a great transition for me, as I’ve been able to learn the framework without learning Ruby.

I have read most of Agile Web Development with Rails, and am now able to differentiate between the Rails work and the Ruby work. Ruby looks like a really fun language to learn, and I hear it is really powerful. I would love to jump into it fully now and reap the benefits of this beautiful framework.

I wouldn’t ever want to develop another site without a good php framework. CakePHP is a great framework to work with. However, it still isn’t as mature as Ruby-on-Rails, and doesn’t support all of the features that Rails does. That’s why I still want to jump into Ruby-on-Rails.

Tagged with: CakePHP, php, rails