The PHP Community is buzzing about a new article, posted on the O'Reilly Ruby blog, about how the author (Derek Silvers of cdbaby.com) made the decision that Ruby on Rails just wasn't right for the project he was working on.

Back in January 2005, I announced on the O'Reilly blog that I was going to completely scrap over 100,000 lines of messy PHP code in my existing CD Baby (cdbaby.com) website, and rewrite the entire thing in Rails, from scratch. [...] The first few months showed good progress, and Jeremy could not have been more amazing, twisting the deep inner guts of Rails to make it do things it was never intended to do.

But at every step, it seemed our needs clashed with Rails' preferences. (Like trying to turn a train into a boat. It's do-able with a lot of glue. But it's damn hard. And certainly makes you ask why you're really doing this.)

Recounting the rest of the story, Derek mentions the turning point ("Is there anything Rails can do that PHP CAN'T do?") and the speed at which they were able to make up for the two years of lost development time. To helps others make a decision for their project, he also includes seven reasons why he made the decision to switch back, including:

• Our entire company's stuff was in php: don't underestimate integration
• Don't want what i don’t need
• I love SQL
• Programming languages are like girlfriends: the new one is better because *you* are better

There's also been several bloggers in the PHP community that have responded to the article:

• Elizabeth Naramore - "Derek Sivers' Article on RoR vs PHP"
• Paul Jones - "Is there anything Rails can do that PHP cannot do? *No.*"
• Terry Chay - "Why PHP triumphs over Ruby"
• Jeff Moore - "Ruby versus PHP or There and Back Again"

The PHP Community is buzzing about a new article, posted on the O'Reilly Ruby blog, about how the author (Derek Silvers of cdbaby.com) made the decision that Ruby on Rails just wasn't right for the project he was working on.

Back in January 2005, I announced on the O'Reilly blog that I was going to completely scrap over 100,000 lines of messy PHP code in my existing CD Baby (cdbaby.com) website, and rewrite the entire thing in Rails, from scratch. [...] The first few months showed good progress, and Jeremy could not have been more amazing, twisting the deep inner guts of Rails to make it do things it was never intended to do.

But at every step, it seemed our needs clashed with Rails' preferences. (Like trying to turn a train into a boat. It's do-able with a lot of glue. But it's damn hard. And certainly makes you ask why you're really doing this.)

Recounting the rest of the story, Derek mentions the turning point ("Is there anything Rails can do that PHP CAN'T do?") and the speed at which they were able to make up for the two years of lost development time. To helps others make a decision for their project, he also includes seven reasons why he made the decision to switch back, including:

• Our entire company's stuff was in php: don't underestimate integration
• Don't want what i don’t need
• I love SQL
• Programming languages are like girlfriends: the new one is better because *you* are better

There's also been several bloggers in the PHP community that have responded to the article:

• Elizabeth Naramore - "Derek Sivers' Article on RoR vs PHP"
• Paul Jones - "Is there anything Rails can do that PHP cannot do? *No.*"
• Terry Chay - "Why PHP triumphs over Ruby"
• Jeff Moore - "Ruby versus PHP or There and Back Again"