Rails or clone on Windows Server 2008 - Most Performant?

Question

I am very interested in learning a Ruby on Rails / Django type web technology but am currently using Windows Server 2008 (for .Net web applications.) I have read that RoR is not very performant on Windows.

1. Would it be unadvisable to create run a beta web application in RoR on a Windows Web server as far as performance is concerned?

2. Would Django or another similar technology be a better choice? Can you be a "happy, productive programmer" and still use a Windows Server?

(Note: I actually do enjoy heavily modified Asp.Net / C#. I'm looking to try some different stacks that might be fun and productive from the start.)

Answer 1

You can still learn a technology on Windows even if it isn't good at high performance on that platform yet.

I strongly recommend against trying to learn new technology at the same time as implementing an actual project you care about. It's better to write a pretend project while learning new tools or languages.

That way you can try out features of that technology that aren't relevant to your desired project, and you aren't distracted by focus on your own project's requirements while you're trying to learn.

So go ahead and learn both, experiment with them on Windows. There are good step-by-step tutorials available and ready-to-install bundles for both Rails and Django on Windows.

Answer 2

Try MonoRail if you're just interested in learning the MVC pattern (not another language).

Answer 3

If you're just learning and evaluating the framework, I wouldn't be too concerned about platform-specifc performance. If/When you get to the point where you have a real project that is successful enough for performance to matter, then you can start thinking about doing platform-specific performance tweaks or simply moving the app to its own server on its preferred platform.

Answer 4

Just try out ASP.NET MVC. It is a very similar framework.