PHP vs. Ruby
With all the buzz about Ruby these days (because of the web application framework ‘Ruby on Rails’) Zend (the people who manage PHP) are feeling the pressure.
As far as Zend is concerned, PHP is not getting its’ fair share of attention even though PHP is:
- Much more available than Ruby – in terms of hosting.
- PHP is a widely used and a proven language with big sites like Yahoo, Digg and Flickr using it.
- PHP is easy to use and easy to learn.
As I mentioned above, Ruby’s recent rise has been largely due to the web application framework ‘Ruby on Rails’. So in response to this, Zend has developed their own framework called: Zend Framework.
Along with the Zend Framework, comes a nifty new web site. From the press release:
Future of Web Application Design Is Here and Looking Good
Varien, a web design and development firm, has redesigned the Web site for Zend Technologies’ PHP framework. Varien completed the redesign as part of an effort to reposition PHP as the cleanest and most simple programming language.
Los Angeles, CA—April 20, 2006—Varien has completed redesigning the Zend Technologies’ new PHP Framework Web site in an effort to make the Framework more accessible. The Framework is a powerful new tool for Web developers, providing a simple, standardized way to create powerful web applications using PHP.
The redesign was part of a broader effort to reposition PHP, which included designing a new logo for the Framework. By repositioning PHP Zend hopes to make the Framework and PHP more appealing to current Web developers and less intimidating to those looking to get into Web development.
“Here you have PHP, a programming language that runs Flickr, Wikipedia, Digg, and even Yahoo, and yet Ruby has become synonymous with the new Web,” said Ben Blumenfeld, the Design Director at Varien. “Hopefully this redesign makes Web designers and entrepreneurs take another look at PHP. With Zend’s Framework, PHP is now simpler, faster and more powerful than it has ever been.”
PHP usage has grown tremendously since PHP4 was released in 2000. However, PHP has recently lost some of its mindshare to the heavily touted Ruby on Rails, despite a huge gap in actual usage. (TIOBE programming community index)
The Zend Framework aims to provide a high-quality, commercial-friendly and open-source based solution for programming in PHP. Zend is excited about the Framework’s usability and knows the site redesign will help developers get the most out of the new technology.
“The coolness fact is also important in initially attracting Web developers and is complementary to the technology. The new look of our Web site enables us to build a more appealing perception of the Zend Framework,” said Andi Gutmans, the vice president of technology at Zend.
The Framework can be found at framework.zend.com. The redesign allows users to download the framework from the front page and highlights projects created using PHP in a section on the front page.
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WILL RUBY CONTINUE TO EAT AWAY AT PHP’S MIND SHARE?
This is the $64 000 question. But we have to consider one point: Ruby has capability that is widely used in Rails that PHP simply does not have; so can a PHP framework be as effective as Rails?
Nerd-minds want to know!
Stefan Mischook
May 9th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
It will take time, but ruby or something else will take the dominance away from php and to a lesser exstint perl. Ruby is the first truly dynamic object oriented language and it’s meta programming capabilities will begin to show how powerful that is.
May 9th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
I’ve just been looking at Ruby again for the first time in two years – so far I am impressed by the language and by Rails.
I am actually building a web application with Ruby and Rails to take advantage of Rails and also as an experiment.
We had looked at PHP frameworks (Cake, PHP on Trax, Symfony) and though very powerful, we found that Rails had some advantages because of aspects built into the Ruby that does not exist in PHP.
That said, we did not actually build anything with the PHP frameworks, so our conclusions have to be taken with that in mind.
I will report my results comparing Rails/Ruby to other things I’ve used: ASP.net, Web Objects, Java/Servlets/JSP, ASP, PHP etc …
May 10th, 2006 at 7:12 am
[...] PHP vs. Ruby [...]
September 13th, 2006 at 6:16 am
A lot of it depends upon the uptake of PHP 5 and the Zend Framework on that platform.
I can’t see medium-large size companies simply dropping the PHP mantle and running to Ruby. It would create a lot of unnecessary work for starters.
Who knows though?
October 13th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Rails provide you with easy pre-made libraries and for accessing database but at the cost of speed. Yes I am sure you have heard this thousand times regarding developer cycle or whatever marketing that is thrown by Rails community.
Sure, everybody loves easy to use language/frameworks just like when Java was born, a lot of C++ people switched boat.
After several years of Java existence, it shifted from easy/productive to bloated. Most people these days went back to C/C++ coding for backend server. One example is http://www.meebo.com.
Rails itself is a framework made by 37signals people when they did their web application. Similar to Django when Lawrence-Journal developers invented it.
These frameworks were made by them to handle their own software, which in the process of doing so, they (might) found it to be a good marketing stuff. This reminds me of Extreme Programming methodology that Kent Beck et al. tried to market when they did their Chrysler software project.
So what happened to Extreme Programming? A thing of a past, and a bag of blast from the community saying that they’re just creating a religion and trying to market the methodology where in reality, it just doesn’t work.
By the way, couple weeks ago I read DHH blog saying he had to code some part of their web app using C to optimize the bottleneck. This means that if you need to tweak Rails, you better know the internal code.
October 13th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
We have found speed issues with Rails and Ruby using fastcgi and APACHE.
I put a stop on the project because I did not want to jump into trying to tweak for speed.
January 20th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
I think they will both have their place. Ruby is just the niche right now. The spike in Ruby projects is for the most part (I think) because the ruby people now have a way to make web apps. I think PHP is the better option because it focuses on web development.
March 30th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
In the context of many other frameworks for PHP, Zend Framework never found any traction. Nor was it developed to any appreciable extent. Consequtently, it was — and continues to be — useless. I believe is trying to breathe life into it, but it will take some serious marketing muscle to overcome its deficiencies. The world wide web will be better off when PHP goes the way of Perl. 4
March 30th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
As far as I know, the Zend framework is still actively developed.
We actually used Zend (even in it’s early stages) for a couple of social networking sites. It wasn’t complete at the time (the Zend framework) but it nonetheless proved to be valuable.
PHP has a messy legacy but it is solid, proven and widely used.
April 1st, 2007 at 1:22 am
There is no framework for web app development in Ruby that competes with Rails in terms of popularity; Rails is the dominant framework of choice for developing web apps using the Ruby programming language (scripting language, however you want to refer to it).
PHP web development has no such dominant framework of choice.
So to answer the question above: “can a PHP framework be as effective as Rails?”… probably not. The PHP web developer community is not as unified around its most popular framework as the Ruby web developer community is unified around Rails.
(does anyone know which PHP framework is the most popular?)
I searched for non-rails frameworks for Ruby development and there is hardly anything – “Nitro” and “Web Application Framework” were the only 2 I could find, and I didn’t get the sense that there was much buy-in. The unification behind Rails puts a lot of pressure on Rails to solve all problems and produces a momentum of evolution that cannot be matched by any PHP frameworks.
Well, these are my wild theories on the topic. I guess I’m saying that the proportion of the community (Ruby devs) that is devoted to and agrees to a set of conventions (Rails) necessitates the evolution of that convention set. If tomorrow there were suddenly 20 new ruby frameworks that effectively competed with Rails, I think then “Ruby” would become far less threatening to PHP. As it stands, there is still a lot of php development with no framework at all, something I am sure cannot be said for Ruby.
July 26th, 2007 at 10:20 am
My guess is Ruby will be to PHP what Java is to C/C++. I don’t see either one dying out anytime soon, nor do I see Ruby becoming more popular than PHP.
November 21st, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Stefan,
I am currently a mechanical engineer here in my country. However my recent fascination with the developments in the web has made me decide to shift careers and try web development. I think it is very dynamic and it is exactly the kind of industry that I want. I am currently studying CSS. Dreamweaver, and XHTML and will soon study a server side programming language after trying out a couple of project websites. However I am now confused on which language to study. Ruby or PHP? Sure, PHP is currently the well documented and most popular but somehow the recent news about RoR has made me rethink on whether I should learn Ruby as my first language or go along with PHP. I hope you can give advice. (my main consideration is to learn how to build a scalable, low maintenance database driven websites as soon as possible)
Thanks a lot.
Russel
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:24 am
Hi Russel,
I am a big believer that today, PHP is the way to go for several reasons. I am not saying that Ruby and ROR don’t have good things about them, it is just that PHP overall, is the better option.
You can learn more at my dedicated PHP web site: http://www.killerphp.com.
… You will find hours of free video tutorials and articles, as well a few opinion pieces that go into the details as to why I prefer PHP over any other web application development language today:
- Will Ruby Kill PHP
- PHP for Web Designers
… And there are a few more.
BTW, I also have a beginners site on css: http://www.csstutorial.net/
Hope that helps,
Stefan