< ?
class a { function x() { echo “
b is an instance of : ” . get_class($this); } }
class b extends a {
}
$b = new b(); echo “
b is an instance of : ” . get_class($b); $b->x();
?>

yeilds

b is an instance of : b b is an instance of : b
As I would expect.

“Nevertheless both languages can do almost the same things. Both languages have try/catch/throw style exception handling. Exceptions are new to PHP5 as PHP4 does not have them. Both languages can be used in an object oriented way.”

Eww. Ruby is a pure-OO implementation. PHP’s was tacked on at the end. The result? Nasty hierarchy polymorphism and introspection. Actually, nasty introspection in general. That’s the reason you can’t do ActiveRecord in PHP the way you can in Ruby.

If you instantiate B, a child of A, and ask A what kind of object it is (through some method in A), it will say A in PHP, and B in Ruby. The correct answer should be B.
“Both languages have additional functionality that can be added through libraries.”
Ruby also supports Mixins, which is why Rails has all those pretty ‘acts as’ decorators. Acts as List. Acts as Authenticated. These little bits are the parts that make Rails a joy to work in. Free functionality across objects without cluttering your code.

“I have not yet run into a time when I was working with one language and hit a road block where the language I was using was not capable of expressing the functionality I needed. Sometimes things are easier in one language versus the other but both PHP and Ruby have been able to “do” the same things.”

The joy in programming in Ruby is that you can express more with less code, and in a clearer fashion. Yes, PHP can do:

for($i = 0; $i
but Ruby can do:
3.times { |i| puts i }

or

3.times do |i| puts i end

I think that’s pretty cool.

“As the owner of a web development company many of our smaller clients do not have the budget for their own VPS account and even if they did, we don’t have the staff to manage a large number of VPS accounts or dedicated servers.”

Linode VPS starting at $19/mo. Spend a little more and throw multiple hosts on there.
“For large projects, it may be worth the trouble, but for small to medium sized projects, PHP is much easier to deploy, less expensive to host, and the language is capable of taking on everything those types of sites require.”

PHP is easier to throw together… but there’s an awesome feeling in properly deploying a Rails app using a Capistrano setup. Not only do you have versioned code, because you’re using Subversion, but you also have versioned releases, with the ability to roll back at any time. Need to add a machine? Throw it in your deploy.rb file and redeploy.
“For our projects, development time with PHP is not noticeably longer than with Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails integrates a lot of things for the developer.”

Unless his projects are all “hello world”, I find this hard to believe. Once you have even a little fluency in Rails, your dev time will drop. This past weekend was the Rails Rumble, where 150 teams developed 150 full applications. While some of them are a bit lame… it’s amazing to see what people could throw together in 48 hours using Rails. Try doing that with PHP or a PHP framework, and I’d be surprised if you could hit half the high points they did.

“There is ActiveRecord for managing the link between models and the database, migrations for keeping development and live databases in sync, built in testing, the ajax – prototype javascript library is included, and you get a well defined file system structure. While it may not all be packaged together as well, PHP can do all of the above.”

This paragraph is what I hated most. He goes on listing all the positives on Rails, and how well it executes on these points, and then goes on to say, “While it may not be packaged together as well…”—that, my friend, is the REASON Rails took off. Rails is a collection of Gems… ActiveRecord, ActionPack, ActionView, etc, but it’s put together in a such a way that it totally enables the developer to do marvelous things in little time.

I don’t get it.