[michaelchisari]

You're being inflammatory. Rails has nowhere near the install base that PHP has, and furthermore, it's a framework, not a language, so the comparison is unequal. Further, setting up and installing Rails is nowhere near as frictionless as installing, for instance, CodeIgniter. Until that can be said, Rails is not a viable alternative.

I'm all for a PHP alternative. I use it because it's ubiquitous, but I have no love for the syntax or the internals. But the only way you can compete with it is to have the same kind of momentum mixed with the kind of frictionless use that comes standard.

[pjscott]

If installing Rails (or Flask, or whatever) isn't trivial compared to the difficulty of writing the actual code, then either your project is a toy, or your web host needs to get its act together.

[dagw]

I take it you have never tried to get major changes to core server infrastructure approved at large bureaucratic institutions. Writing your code in php is often orders of magnitudes faster, easier and cheaper than getting a decent RoR setup installed.

[escoz]

That's your experience, and highly subjective. And yes, I deploy code to dozens of enterprise servers for a global company. And that company is looking into Rails, not PHP.

[dagw]

My point isn't so much rails vs php, but about the non-technical difficulties in getting major infrastructure changes done (especially if it's for a minor project) . I'm sure it'd be equally hard to get a ASP.NET MVC stack set up at a company with a big RoR setup already in place.

[michaelchisari]

Looking into rails? What are they using currently?

[escoz]

.NET, like most enterprises, afaik.

[MartinCron]

major changes to core server infrastructure approved at large bureaucratic institutions

It sounds like you've already lost.

[dagw]

How so? I find out what I have to work with, work within the limitations set, deliver what the client asks for (if I feel it can be done in a reasonable way) and collect my paycheck.

[MartinCron]

I didn't mean to be so snarky, I was just projecting. I personally don't have the patience to deal with organizations like that anymore. Life is too short and they aren't the only source of paychecks that I can find.

[michaelchisari]

Let's be clear, we're talking about popularity here. We're talking about the massive popularity of Wordpress and Joomla, of which no Rails project can match. We're talking about the fact that most websites on the web, by that standard, would be "toys". But that doesn't matter, because those toys are what power the web. Not everybody is Facebook, not everybody is looking to secure VC, not everybody is coding their own site.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that what you're saying is indicative of the kind of out-of-touch response that keeps any of the proposed alternatives from replacing PHP.

[escoz]

I was not talking about popularity, I was talking about mindshare, two very different things. If you're talking about popularity, Java, C and C++ are more popular than php, but I don't see you pointing them as viable solutions. tiobe.com

[michaelchisari]

but I don't see you pointing them as viable solutions

Java, C and C++ are viable solutions, due to their popularity.