Before Ruby on Rails became except as one of the leading development platforms currently available a lot of people laughed it off as nothing but hype over something new, for the sake of something new.
However, over the last decade the Rails framework has proven itself to be more than a shallow framework, which wouldn’t be a strong development platform in real world applications. Furthermore, more and more developers are making use of Rails to develop web applications due to its ability to cut down development times by eliminating the need to undertake mundane tasks before the developer begins to code the application.
Due to the popularity of the Rails framework a lot of other traditional languages have been integrated with the best of the Rails framework to create more efficient ways to develop applications.
* Django: Of all the alternatives to Ruby on Rails, this seems the most popular. Uses Python, a popular language with hackers and early adopters.
* TurboGears: Another Python project. I haven’t heard much about this one, but it seems to still be active.
* PHP On Trax: As the name suggests, this seems to be a deliberate port of Rails to PHP. Seeing the traction that PHP has, this is worth looking into. If you wind up in an environment where PHP is the prescribed platform, this might be a good framework.
* Symfony: Not a Rails clone (I don’t think), but it advertises as having “simple templating and helpers, smart URLs, scaffolding, object model and MVC separation, and Ajax support”, so I’d say it seems to fall into the same family of modern frameworks. Also PHP.
* Junction is apparently Rails for… Javascript? I know very little about this, so you’d best just follow the link if you’re interested.
* Steve Yegge’s Port of Rails to Javascript: I don’t know if this project has a name, or if it’s available outside of Google, but this made some headlines awhile back.
* Groovy on Grails: Yes, couldn’t forget Groovy on Grails. Groovy is a scripting language based on Ruby that runs on the Java Runtime Environment. Grails is… Rails for Groovy. If I’ve oversimplified this description, feel free to correct me in the comments.
* JRuby On Rails: I don’t thinks there’s an official site for this; my understanding is that JRuby is compatible enough with Ruby that Rails is essentially still Rails… just running on JRuby instead.
And, of course, the aforementioned Perl on Rails. Wow! Quite a list, and I’m sure I missed some frameworks, both Rails-inspired and otherwise. I’m not interested in listing all frameworks, though, but specifically those with Rails-like features.
So, yes. Whether people choose Ruby or not, it seems pretty clear that Rails-like frameworks have caught on in a big way. Suits me fine; the more I learn about the framework, the more I like it, and it’s great to know that similar frameworks exist should I have the need to use an alternate language.
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