Ruby On Rails Showdown with Java Spring/Hibernate

Paradox writes "Java developer Justin Gehtland recently tried re-implementing one of his web applications in Ruby on Rails instead of his normal Java Spring/Hibernate setup. His analysis of overall performance and application size was startling, to say the least. The Java app's configuration alone was nearly the size of the entire Rails codebase, and Rails application was significantly (15%-30%) faster! At the same time, the Ruby community is abuzz because Ruby is getting a new optimized bytecode compiler for its upcoming 2.0 release. Will Ruby on Rails become even faster as a result?"

Comments

Ruby is a toy

[ahmetaa]

RoR is a toy comparing to Hibernate and Spring. There is no serious caching, no serious transation capabilities, or messaging mechanisms. hype and buzz. Also, Check this page for a comparison of RoR and Hibernate. However, it is probably better than Php. http://www.theserverside.com/articles/article.tss? l=RailsHibernate

Re:any comparison like this...

[dubl-u]

My understanding is that a good J2EE implementation is capable of scaling to thousands of clients (one article I read claimed a 250,000 client load), the ruby implementation might start crawling after as little as 50 clients.

Having seen the guts of a fair number of alleged enterprise-scale Java applications, I encourage people not to believe the hype.

If you have a really good understanding of what it means to build a scalable web app, some of the J2EE stuff may be of use to you in some circumstances. But unless you really know which pieces to use and when, you're better off not using any of it. Why? Two reasons:

First, if you use the wrong pieces or the right pieces in the wrong places, you'll make things much worse than they'd be otherwise. On several projects I have made an application run 10x faster, consume a tenth the memory, and become much easier to work on by ripping out all the EJB nonsense.

Second, most projects just don't need massive scalability right now, and very few of them will ever need more than you can squeeze out of modern commodity hardware. By paying for scalability too soon, you slow development, forgoing features or spending capital that could mean the difference between success and failure for your project.

Re:I was unclear about YARV. Let me clarify

[jericho4.0]

Language is a living thing. Witness Chaucer, and his multiple spellings of one word in the same work. The 'right' way to say or spell something is largly the invention of 1800's school teachers and acedemics who thought they were better than the vulgar man on the street.

IMO, focusing on such aspects of a persons comunication is a sign of intellectual hubris. "Well,I know several phrases in Latin." means nothing.