A Comparison between ROR and PHP Frameworks

While choosing a technology the first thing that a business owner thinks of is how many years will the technology last? For them, it is important to introspect on why they want to choose a specific technology. The developers also look for technologies that will last for long so that the ROI is high. Thus, both business owners and developers prefer a technology that has a fairly large community and highly recommended. In this regard, both the ROR (Ruby on Rails) and PHP frameworks have their own set of pros and cons. Both of these can be compared on the basis of their performance, scalability, support, maintenance, and costs.

However, it had been stated several times by experts that it is not exactly fair to compare PHP with Ruby on Rails. It is like comparing apples to oysters. This is due to the fact that while PHP is a programming language that is used to write applications, ROR is a web framework. In this regard, the Ruby on Rails can be more suitably compared to Zend framework, CakePHP, Laravel, Codeigniter, etc. PHP is popular as it is an open source technology that can be used by any developer for creating complicated apps well. There are other frameworks like Laravel that is growing in popularity. The question is why developers and business owners would opt for ROR? One of the main reasons is the library. This is an absolute necessity for developing as well as organizing the applications. There are several PHP based projects which till date lack a proven and mature framework. Ruby on Rails in this regard endeavors to simplify the learning process by using conventions.

Here’s a brief comparison between Ruby (the language) and PHP:

Scalability, Maintenance: Both PHP and ROR are scalable. However, this issue rises quite early with Ruby because its use of resources and it includes quite common issues when compared to the other. Thus, while comparing these for scaling, reviewing will be based on way the app is being designed. To solve the scaling problems there are several online services as well. For developers who want to scale a website, there are ample resources which can be written for PHP. However, the same rule does not apply to the other framework.

As far as maintenance is considered, here too, ROR has a limited selection of web frameworks as compared to the other. On a general note it can be said that as long as one uses a framework to develop apps, maintenance is no trouble at all.

Performance and Pace: Where performance is concerned it has to be remembered that one is a language while the other is a framework. The latter is definitely used to accelerate productivity over speed. On the other hand, a language, in its purest form, is quite fast. But as the developers keep adding the web frameworks their performances drop. At certain stage you will find that both are at the same pace. When compared to other frameworks, like, Laravel, ROR has a better performance ratio. As languages, both Ruby as well as PHP are known as the slowest ones but the former requires more resources to work. There are various runtimes for both. These are slower when compared to the other languages.

Resources: If both are compared on the issue of resources then PHP obviously scores. The problem is that there are many resources for these frameworks that are outdated. However, the communities from both sides do pay heed to such issues. They try to keep the resources available and up to date.

Cost: There is a tough competition in the world of PHP. As a result the developers charge less. There are various factors responsible for this. The two primary reasons are that this language is easy to learn and although developers are readily available but they might not all be experienced. As opposed to this, the web framework is more difficult to learn. Most of the languages have limits on the availability as well as how many codes can be written. But there are no such limitations here. On the contrary there is a huge audience for this language. Hence, the popular companies select this. For the web framework the cost can shoot up pretty fast and it is more difficult to find a hosting that supports it.

Developing time: For both the languages the developing time is quite fast.

Hence, a lot has to be considered before comparing these two. Both have their set of advantages as well as disadvantages. Which language suits which developer is purely a question of personal preference. To get maximum benefits of ROR development, you may consider hiring services of a Ruby on Rails development company.

We provide Rails development services. If you would like to talk to one of our expert Ruby on Rails developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.