Ruby on Rails vs. Laravel – Which is better?

 

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

In the spirit of revising the programming basics, I decided to look into this topic today.

Over the years, there have been so many arguments on Laravel and Rails. Which is better? Which is more difficult to learn? and so on.

 

My Research began…

As a young man aspiring to be a super web developer, who also wants to learn a ‘power’ framework (most importantly, a framework that can get work done and fast too), I started my research by asking some seniors…

 – Google: Which framework is better?

– Otemuyiwa: Which is more powerful (since both are)?

– Mackenzie: Which do you recommend?

– Omeiza: What do you look out for in a framework?

– Oluwasegun: Are these two the only powerhouse of web frameworks?

– Ifeoluwa: Why should I use them?

And many other senior men (and women) out there, I doff my hat dab for you o.

 

After all these questions, I started my own investigation, which involved:

• working with each framework and noting the differences and similarities;
• building simple and pretty complex apps (which I’m too lazy to publish).

 

I came to realize that neither of the frameworks is bad.  Better yet, both frameworks are awesome and unique in their own way.

So here’s what I’m going to do:  I will list out the similarities and differences (respectively) that I came across with while working with each framework.

 

Introduction to Laravel and Ruby on Rails

Hold on a sec… before I proceed, I would like to give a brief intro to both frameworks.

If you like to know more get their books!

1. Laravel

Laravel is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It is a PHP framework created and released in June 2011, by Mr. Taylor Otwell.

Click here to start your own Laravel journey.

 

2. Ruby on Rails

David Heinemeier Hansson, I love to call him DHH, created Rails from his work on the project management tool – Basecamp, at the web application company also called Basecamp. It’s a Ruby framework, the first release in June 2004, gained popularity around 2005. It caught the attention of Jack Dorsey of Twitter.

Click here to enter the world of Rails.

 

Similarities between Laravel and Ruby on Rails

1. They are both OOP-based frameworks.
2. They both follow the MVC software design pattern.
3. They are both open-source.
4. They both came from scripting language backgrounds (they don’t need a compiler to interpret their code base).
5. They both offer awesome features in terms of ORM (Object Relational Mapping) and app structure generally.
6. They both have an unbelievably awesome community support.
7. They both emphasize on the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle.
8. Deployment: I don’t know about you, but to deploy both frameworks is hectic (at least for the first try).
9. They both have huge varieties of external components, Ruby – gem, while Laravel – composer.

 

Differences between Laravel and Ruby on Rails

1. The programming languages differ. Rails is from Ruby while Laravel is from PHP.
2. Their syntax is different.
3. Laravel uses semicolon, but Rails doesn’t.
4. Rails doesn’t use any curly braces, but Laravel does.
5. The way rails declares its functions is totally different from Laravel.
6. Rails is not explicit enough; it assumes too much, but Laravel gives room for creativity. It allows developers to take charge (codebase)  – no scaffolding (I know that an experienced developer can bypass that).

 

NB: The aim of this article isn’t to stimulate more arguments but rather to bridge the gap between the two frameworks.

One other thing. Hmmmm… They are both cheap, so go out there and start learning.

I admit I’m no “know it all”, so leave a reply in the comment section below, with some of the obvious similarities/differences I may have missed out.

Thanks in advance!