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One of the most important factors for adapting to open source technology is the community behind it, and while PHP seems to be falling apart as I see with multiple frameworks and scattered focus, Ruby have taken off with their Ruby on Rails application, and Python followed them with the open sourcing of Django. Both frameworks seem pretty good. I have tried Ruby on Rails for practice and am pretty much impressed with it, while the issue of internationalization and proper unicode support remains a dangling issue, and Globalize is a nice work around but implies too much over head on the database as I see.

Anyways, all I said above is a quick shallow opinion of the matter, and truth be said I don’t have enough knowledge to really judge which one is doing better. My comparison here is based on the community and interest of people in the two frameworks, RoR and Django. A look at Google Trends comparing searches for “ruby on rails”, “django”, and “python django” as django it self relates to much more than the programming framework. This is what you get:

Sorry I had to shrink the image here to be able to display it. Click it for large view. As you say, while django refers to much more than just the framework, Ruby on Rails still is getting more searches for, thus implying a more public interest so far, and truth be said, in terms of marketing at least, Ruby on Rails are doing a great job and have strong fan base behind it as I see it. Search for “python django” falls much lower, but it’s probably not a fair comparison as most python programmers would search for Django straight. Another nice thing to note is the high News reference to Django on the other hand.

A look at the language interest it self, Ruby Vs Python shows how Ruby are drawing more attention with time, and you can also see the jump for python in 2005, when they most probably revealed their own version of Rails, Django.

The last comparison I did was for the two framework sites on Alexa, and the results again favor Ruby on Rails but with a sinusoidal weird pattern that has fallen a bit hard just at the end, compared to more steadily Django lower one.

Again, these results only reflect the public interest in the framework so far. Some people, my self included, would feel a lot more comfortable with a strong community already around, but Django has its advantages that could draw some attention. I personally am trying to master Ruby on Rails, but the lack of i18n seems to be pushing me to work with Django as well, which I am sure would be a great framework as well. Maybe then I would be able to give a more detailed comparison between the two.

What do you think?

Popularity: 39% [?]

I’ve been trying to figure out the Eclipse (open source IDE)shortcut keys, mainly the switching between open files (editors) when I came across this post. I thought Eclipse users might find it useful. Though I should note, for me to switch between open editors I had to use CTRL + Shift + Tab, then left and right arrow keys to make my choice. Reason is CTRL + TAB goes first to top menu items and not open editors. The writer seems to be using Mac so maybe this is the reason for the difference. I should note that I am using the RadRails version of Eclipse as well, even though I doubt that makes the difference.

Popularity: 22% [?]

One of my concerns about it was how many hosts are available. Last night I did quick search and found out Ruby on Rails now has many many hosts, and it has been integrated into the cPanel as well. You can view a full list here of Ruby on Rails hosts. And to my surprise as well, my HostGator have already added support for it.

Full details about how to use Ruby on Rails with Hostgator through SSH is available here. Guess that rules out one of the reasons why I thought PHP Symfony would be easier to manage. The quest continues however as to which one is better. I started to like Ruby on Rails, but general comment is that Ruby by nature is slower than PHP. Then I came across the PHP Symfony framework which is also amazing, cleaner in certain aspects like the syntax, class files and database creation. However it is still new, and there is the CakePHP competitor for it. On the other hand, Ruby on Rails seems to be expanding fast, I would like to be among the people who start with it, and it’s heavily pushed by the community, already many high quality books are published about it. So I am a bit inclined to the RoR road. Any second opinion and discussion is welcome on this.

Popularity: 28% [?]

I never thought Mac Ads against Vista will get so popular and have so many clones. Ruby on Rails have started something quite similar against Java and PHP. Honestly, despite being a Java fan, the commercial is quite true. I’ve learned Java is good for enterprise heavy applications, but for light or middle weight applications that require on going modification, I would never recommend it. Ruby on Rails, or possibly PHP with Symphony can do a lot better.

Popularity: 36% [?]

This is a nice interview with one of the developers of Twitter, talking about the issues they face with Ruby on Rails when it reaches peak usage. Apparently the site is getting around 11,000 hits a second on peak times, and since Rails cannot talk to more than one database at a time, this is causing big time delay for end user. This does not mean we should all keep away from Ruby on Rails, as it a great potential in cutting down development cycles, and enforcing the MVC. Unless you are planning of building a site that will receive this massive hit, I guess RoR would do just fine.

Popularity: 26% [?]

While Microsoft are still struggling to meet the current HTML standards in their IE7, and along comes the nightmare of web developers to support IE6 & IE7 (since IE7 is only distributed this time for licensed Windows versions), Apple, Mozilla and Opera are pushing the wheels and increasing the pressure on W3c for the adoption of HTML5. The request for the adoption comes from the frustration of the slow progress of the W3C community. The delay however is good for the people behind, people who once said we set the standards!

Popularity: 11% [?]

A general problem that if unaware of could lead to very bad results. Windows Search by default does not index files with unknown extensions. So if you are a programmer, and you are tracing a code that calls a function, say xyz, how would you know where this function is? I faced this problem today with WordPress. I needed to update a specific function, namely get_links_list but was unaware where this function lies. It is in one of the PHP files, and Windows Search does look inside files with unknown extensions. I don’t have Google Desktop installed yet after my last PC format and I’m not sure it does search inside program files by default as well. The long manual way of doing it would be to open all PHP files inside and look for the desired function.

Luckily however, I Googled for that matter and there are other people who have done their homework previously. The Computer Vet Weblog has a nice short straight-forward tutorial on how to enable Windows search for files with unknown extension. Without the tutorial however, I would have never guessed how to get it done. Really awkward way for an obvious needed feature.

Popularity: 11% [?]