Web Development Frameworks: Zend Framework vs Ruby on Rails vs ASP.NET MVC

Question

i used Zend Framework b4 but will like to know what do u think? which is better and why. lets be objective ok?

Zend Framework my background with this is ~3 mths

Good:

• Templating thru Zend_Layouts & Zend_Views
• Zend_Forms, Zend_Validation, Zend_Filter: assists in form inputs
• Zend_Tool now allows for something like Ruby on Rails's CMD code genration except that its now still very limited in terms of functionality

Bad:

• steep learning curve
• can be confusing for me now still

Ruby on Rails viewed some screencasts only

Good

• i like the cmd code generation for controller, actions, models and forms
• it seems to be easily incorporated with AJAX

Bad

• i get the impression that it will be hard to deploy

ASP.NET MVC also watched a few screencasts only

Good

• i like LINQ
• extensive support with VS 2010 will speed up development

Bad

• expensive

Answer 1

I personally love Ruby - it's a great language to code in. I also write C#.NET for my proper job and think the MVC framework is the best thing to happen to .NET since it launched. However, for maximum portability I still use PHP for my own web projects as it's really easy to find cheap hosting on Linux (and it works on IIS too).

Answer 2

Zend Framework:

Good: Stable API, acceptable performance, doesn't get in the way when it's not needed, easy to integrate legacy databases

Bad: Hard to get into, sometimes confusing syntax

And also the general php advantages apply, such as easy deployment, portability, large ecosystem

Rails

Good: Easy to create a working app, easy deployment with phusion passenger, nice unit testing integration

Bad: Performance not always great, API is always changing, hard to break out of the framework

General

Rails is helpful to create an application very quick. It definately takes longer with the Zend Framework. But only as long as no problems arise. I feel that it's way harder to detect the root of a problem in rails. All the magic happening everywhere in rails is very nice in many cases but it makes the behaviour of the whole application less predictable. So if you don't want to follow the extact path, the framework creators have thought out for you, you'll likely run into serious problems with rails. You probably have to write a third less code with rails, but that costs you a third of your control over your application.

But the biggest annoyance for me was that rails changes very much between versions. I've spent a lot of time porting applications to newer rails versions, with deprecations and api changes here and functionality externalized to plugins there. It seems that rails isn't that mature as it's said to be.

Answer 3

I would add to the list CakePHP. It's really a "Rails on PHP", with strict convention over configuration and strict MVC. I personally prefer CakePHP to Zend. Oh, and deployment is really really easy.