On Apr 12, 2009, at 7:47 PM, Craig White wrote:

> One thing is certain, I have been spoiled by ruby on rails and php  
> just
> seems so crude and ugly now.

Comparing PHP (language) to Ruby on Rails (framework) is a little  
off.  It's like comparing an engine to a car.  (Can you believe this I  
can't drive this stupid engine unless I add wheels!  Gawd!)

Write the equivalent code in Ruby (without Rails) to get a more  
accurate comparison.  You said something like 'how can I do this with  
without PEARDB', which is more-or-less the same as asking how you can  
do database queries in Ruby without ActiveRecord.  It is, of course,  
perfectly possible.  It's easy to forget how much the framework is  
providing for you, though perhaps that's your point.

I did PHP professionally for 6 years, and switched to Ruby/Rails about  
1 year ago.  I agree Rails is a great framework for web applications  
development, and much better than the PHP-based me-too Rails clones  
like Cake.  I just think PHP has acquired an un-earned bad  
reputation.  It's a very capable language.  The low entry barrier is  
both it's blessing and curse.

ActiveRecord is my chief complaint about Rails, as it tends to treat  
the database as a giant hash table (query in a loop, anyone?), which  
discards a lot of benefits you get from using a relational database.

alex