My latest project has just been released in Beta. It’s at 9figs.com and is a goal oriented project. The goal is to receive 1 Billion pixels, uploaded from users, to display in our widget.
This is built with Ruby on Rails except 2 files. The scripts that serve up the widget content and handle the resulting click-throughs are PHP. As the project grows, these files will likely receive a very high number of requests so RoR speed issues are a concern. Initially, I wrote them as part of the Rails app and then ported them over to PHP. Since, it has been over 2 years since I’ve touched anything ending with .php, this made the transition easy. PHP still remains extremely easy to pick up. You just have to remember to end all your lines with a semi-colon.
The widget serving file was extremely slow in Ruby. Each request generated several RMagick objects and it would not have taken many requests to pull the server to a halt. Or, require a more advanced (read: expensive) hosting solution. I was impressed by how fast the same logic could execute when written in PHP. I do miss that benefit of PHP.
I was able to build the entire app in 28 hours of development time. Speaking as a freelancer who only codes a few hours a week, productivity is key. So far, I haven’t found a case where I am not more productive in Rails than I would be in PHP (and I’m not interested in learning anything else).
Go check out the project and get the widget up on your site.
