The Rails response will (inevitably) be, "we don't WANT to be big" (which I think is stupid, too.
Another side effect of being big-- you can sell installable products in the language. How do you think Mint ( the stats mint-- not the finance mint) would fare if he had released it for Rails (it's an installable PHP stats package).
Rails playing nice on shared hosting would make Rails better, would provide a incubator for budding devs, and provide a marketplace for low-cost Rails products.
Geoffrey Grosenbach
· 1 year ago
I totally agree that many people start with shared hosts. I did a few years ago, and I had many headaches trying to deploy Rails at Dreamhost. Once I finally got it figured out, it was time to move on to a VPS and I haven't looked back (although I still host the Ruby on Rails Podcast site on Dreamhost shared hosting).
But I think you have also missed one of the main features of Rails...the development environment and local webserver.
People who want to learn Rails don't even need to pay $5/month. They can pay $0 by learning how to use it on their local machine. Granted, this doesn't get them a publicly accessible webserver, but it's enough to develop an application and find out if it's worth paying $10-20/month to deploy.
When I started web development with Perl in 1997, I had to compile Apache, figure out how to edit configuration files, and stumble through arcane (or absent) error messages. Because of that, I became pretty confident in configuring Apache, but I wouldn't have needed to learn that if I had something like the Mac OS X Locomotive app for Rails. You download it, hit the Go button, and you're running a local development webserver with Rails.
If you like the way it works, then you can pursue other options for making it available on the Internet.
immad
· 1 year ago
you know about heroku.com. Fello ycers from new round. Basically what you describe and maybe better.
mattmaroon
· 1 year ago
I didn't know if they were public info yet. I try not to blog about YCers unless I know it's safe to.
immad
· 1 year ago
they were on a couple of blog posts and on yc.news. But maybe they dont want more attention, so u make a fair point
immad
· 1 year ago
go ahead and delete these comments just in case :)
Daniel Ha
· 1 year ago
I think they had a "launch" post on news.yc a couple months back.
>> David Heeneymeeneymeineymoe Hansson
So awesome.
dotservant.com website hosting
· 1 year ago
Indeed, RoR needs to put more attention to smaller users and the increase the level of user friendliness, it is not easy for someone new to RoR to actually deploy and start using a program done using RoR, and we know that this big group of small users is likely using some sort of shared hosting account.
aidanf
· 1 year ago
Hmm, Disqus ate my previous attempt to comment. Anyway...
I don't think that the rails core team care whether rails becomes as popular and widespread as php. The company behind php (Zend) has a business model based on widespread usage of php. The more people use php, the more money they make. Their whole business is based on making php easy to setup and deploy.
On the other hand the companies on the rails core team build web applications. Their business model is based on making money from these applications, not from the framework itself.
Dreamhost a hosting business. If they want to make money from making rails easy to deploy on a shared host they should hire someone to implement this functionality. It would benefit them in the long run and would be more productive than complaining about it.
mattmaroon
· 1 year ago
I might agree with you about the rails core, though I'd guess they have a lot more to gain from a Zend-like model than Basecamp.
If Dreamhost does figure out a solution, they'll probably keep it to themselves, and then you'll have Rails running well on one shared hosting company. To rival PHP, they need it on every one. That's why it has to come from the rails community, not Dreamhost.
dayvid
· 1 year ago
The Dreamhost post is a joke. The new breed of dynamic languages and their frameworks require more resources and have exposed that most shared hosts are oversold pieces of junk. You can get a VPS for $20 or less a month at places like Slicehost, do anything you want with full root access - why would anyone go back?
immad
· 1 year ago
people want to build web apps before they want to train as sysadmins. You aren't really seeing the point of the post
mattmaroon
· 1 year ago
Exactly. I built a site in php that made 6 figures annually and didnt have the slightest clue what full root access was.
It would be silly to argue that shared hosting is a good choice for everyone, and it's equally silly to argue that it's not a great choice for the new developers that are the lifeblood of any community.
dayvid
· 1 year ago
Do you know how easy it is to install this stuff anymore? I could go from zero to production ready rails stack in 30 seconds with apt-get and 5 minutes of googling. Now certainly you'll need to be more savvy for a truly optimized system, but pre-optimization is the root of all evil ;) IF you start making money, then you can pay for a sysadmin to tweak the system.
All Comments
The Rails response will (inevitably) be, "we don't WANT to be big" (which I think is stupid, too.
Another side effect of being big-- you can sell installable products in the language. How do you think Mint ( the stats mint-- not the finance mint) would fare if he had released it for Rails (it's an installable PHP stats package).
Rails playing nice on shared hosting would make Rails better, would provide a incubator for budding devs, and provide a marketplace for low-cost Rails products.
But I think you have also missed one of the main features of Rails...the development environment and local webserver.
People who want to learn Rails don't even need to pay $5/month. They can pay $0 by learning how to use it on their local machine. Granted, this doesn't get them a publicly accessible webserver, but it's enough to develop an application and find out if it's worth paying $10-20/month to deploy.
When I started web development with Perl in 1997, I had to compile Apache, figure out how to edit configuration files, and stumble through arcane (or absent) error messages. Because of that, I became pretty confident in configuring Apache, but I wouldn't have needed to learn that if I had something like the Mac OS X Locomotive app for Rails. You download it, hit the Go button, and you're running a local development webserver with Rails.
If you like the way it works, then you can pursue other options for making it available on the Internet.
>> David Heeneymeeneymeineymoe Hansson
So awesome.
I don't think that the rails core team care whether rails becomes as popular and widespread as php. The company behind php (Zend) has a business model based on widespread usage of php. The more people use php, the more money they make. Their whole business is based on making php easy to setup and deploy.
On the other hand the companies on the rails core team build web applications. Their business model is based on making money from these applications, not from the framework itself.
Dreamhost a hosting business. If they want to make money from making rails easy to deploy on a shared host they should hire someone to implement this functionality. It would benefit them in the long run and would be more productive than complaining about it.
If Dreamhost does figure out a solution, they'll probably keep it to themselves, and then you'll have Rails running well on one shared hosting company. To rival PHP, they need it on every one. That's why it has to come from the rails community, not Dreamhost.
It would be silly to argue that shared hosting is a good choice for everyone, and it's equally silly to argue that it's not a great choice for the new developers that are the lifeblood of any community.