Reply to: Dragon's Den

[tim123]

Don't know how easy it is to learn, what languages are you used to? RoR requires you to learn Ruby (duh) and gives you very easy ways to do common web-server tasks, such as databases and web services.

I don't think it replaces HTML, it's an alternative to PHP/ASP(.net)/JSP so I guess it does dynamic page creation but you'd still have to set up your HTML somewhere (AFAIK).

Thanks

tim

[Sysman]

The thing about the Mingle example I used was that it is written by thoughtworks who see themselves as the most forward thinking software company/consultancy going so I really cannot fathom how they let a server go out the door that eats 300 meg without doing anything.

Sometimes these types can get carried away with abstract concepts. I once audited a project which was so modular that half a dozen users could bring the system to its knees. It was supposed to support over a hundred users.

Module A would call B, C, D, E and F, and they'd all call each other, duplicating I/Os previously done, and it was worse than that - up to 200 ISAM reads where 5 or less would have sufficed.

[krytonsheep]

It just means it's not suitable for high-volume web-apps.

It is suitable for high-volume apps. Hence sites like yell.com use it. Another good example is Hulu (US's version of the BBC iIPlayer), stats for June 2009: 10 million unique viewers with 348 million streams.

The only downside with it is, once you get down to the nitty gritty it is a very advanced language. Only a very good C++/OO developer stands a chance of understanding ruby 'magic'. Hence it's not always best suited for traditional web developers.

[d000hg]

Simply saying "OMG 300Mb" initself is like complaining that "OMG my hello world is 5Kb on Linux but 400Kb in Windows". Who knows what is inside that 300Mb, and is that a fixed overhead or does it double for each user

Still, there are sites out there using RoR that have more than 3 users and don't collapse Who knows what the deal is with Mingle (or your setup), nobody would use RoR if it was simply unusable as you seem to claim.

[minestrone]

The thing about the Mingle example I used was that it is written by thoughtworks who see themselves as the most forward thinking software company/consultancy going so I really cannot fathom how they let a server go out the door that eats 300 meg without doing anything.

I know that caching has a big effect on performance but there still has to be some work done preparing the page and that cannot be dismissed.

[d000hg]

With the JIT compilers Java is just short of C in terms of speed on most functions.

So they say, also for C#. Both are very good but as soon as you write 'pure' code which is actually doing something (like a big block of calculations) rather than simply calling external systems, you see a big difference in raw speed. Most apps these days can spend most of the time not running their own code - they're waiting for a web-service or a database or the UI or the graphics processor.

Anyway, I dont know if you have ever used Mingle? It was writtten in RoR and takes up 300 meg on my server even though it only has 3 users and 1 project with about 50 tasks. Pages hang for a few seconds. It struggles at a ball hair above the minimum load never mind serious load.

Never heard of it. If some app written in RoR takes seconds to render a page, but big websites manage to work successfully with the same tech, sounds like the app is to blame.

[d000hg]

So you are not bothered about the performance of your code then?

I'm bothered it does what it was designed to do. If the software does a ton of data processing then I'm bothered about using low-level things like SSE. If The project is essentially allowing the user to interact with a DB through a pretty web interface (which is what even sites like Facebook and eBay boil down to to a large degree) then I'm bothered about designing an efficient database, not optimising the code which writes HTML pages.

I don't think RoR has shown suitability for high-volume web-apps myself. But that doesn't make it a useless tool. It just means it's not suitable for high-volume web-apps.

[Fred Bloggs]

Well there's another one of those "how the **** is that going to make any money?" sites.

I just thought exactly the same thing.

[Sysman]

If you go to the recipies page..

http://www.mydish.co.uk/recipes/meal...s/soup-recipes

you get javascript errors. Hover over the image the pointer does not change to a hand yet it is a link. 600,000 grand? I could knock that up in a few weeks and get a mate to do the design.

It could be a decent plan B if you could attach yourself to angel investors who plough money into ideas before they build the technology.

<ugh>spaces in URLs</ugh>

I've always suspected that the real way to make money from sites like this is to earn money from flogging shares or the web site itself.

Anyone any idea of how much the free advertising she got from appearing on DD was worth?

[krytonsheep]

I am bothered, but the performance on web sites nearly always comes down to the design/caching schemes as opposed to what language they use.

[minestrone]

In the context of ruby on rails in a web environment, the speed of ruby doesn't really matter. With large well designed sites (using memcache etc) the majority of requests are cached and never get close to RoR. If the request isn't cached, the response time is mostly made up of database accesses. If you take Facebook for example something like 99% of requests are cache hits.

Hence if you use RoR sites like yell.com they work absolutely fine.

Never used Mingle, but if it's running very slow I would guess the MySQL database on your sever may not be configured optimally.

So you are not bothered about the performance of your code then?

[krytonsheep]

The performance of ruby is truly appalling.

In the context of ruby on rails in a web environment, the speed of ruby doesn't really matter. With large well designed sites (using memcache etc) the majority of requests are cached and never get close to RoR. If the request isn't cached, the response time is mostly made up of database accesses. If you take Facebook for example something like 99% of requests are cache hits.

Hence if you use RoR sites like yell.com they work absolutely fine.

Never used Mingle, but if it's running very slow I would guess the MySQL database on your sever may not be configured optimally.

[minestrone]

Does it matter? That's a serious question. Something like Facebook/eBay would struggle but what % of web-apps ever come under serious load? Most aren't even aimed at the mass market in the first place.

Java is still slower than writing everything in C... same arguments apply about cost of resources to run the software Vs time needed to write the software.

With the JIT compilers Java is just short of C in terms of speed on most functions.

Anyway, I dont know if you have ever used Mingle? It was writtten in RoR and takes up 300 meg on my server even though it only has 3 users and 1 project with about 50 tasks. Pages hang for a few seconds. It struggles at a ball hair above the minimum load never mind serious load.

[thunderlizard]

<off to pcworld for new keyboard />

<xml-pedant>
All very well but if you're going to write joke XML tags please make sure they are legal. Element names can't have spaces. A validator will think "off" is the element name, think "to" is the first attribute, and then complain that it doesn't have a value.
</xml-pedant>

[DimPrawn]

The performance of ruby is truly appalling. Far worse than java circa 1999. I think Ruby is one of these fads that will die out soon when people realise how truly crap it is.

The more people who waste their time learning a dead-end technology like RoR the better. Go for it everyone. RoR IS the future of web development.