6 ms·

DHH addresses Dreamhost's criticism of Rails

39 points by pius 19y ago

pius 19y ago
Interesting, DHH runs his blog on SliceHost.
- Readmore 19y ago
  I have a couple sites on Slicehost and I love it. The only thing I miss from shared hosting sites is the easy to use management console for setting up email and such. Other than that Slicehost is the way to go.
  - scw 19y ago
    A pet feature I wish they had was exposing a way to download the actual Xen image your site is hosted within. Then you could be developing your production server sans internet, and rsync the resulting image.
  - Zak 19y ago
    I generally hate those consoles, as they make things work in unexpected ways. Recently, I spent a while tracking down a bug on a managed VPS with Plesk installed where mail sent by scripts on the server to the same domain (let's call it example.com) were going to local delivery at example.com instead of the MX entry of exchange.example.com (a separate server). Many times, I want the email system to share its login database with some web app anyway.
  - spiralhead 19y ago
    What I would really love to see is affordable hosting like this but with the ability to do stuff like run a custom web server. I know this thread isn't really about hosting but has anyone seen something like this or is it even technically possible without going fully dedicated?
    - scw 19y ago
      Read more on Slicehost -- its exactly that; you have full access to a virtualized machine, and can do pretty much anything.
- davidw 19y ago
  Does slicehost have that Amazon crap where on any given day, you might open the box and find that the cat is dead, or do you get your instance back even if something happens to it?
  - nickb 19y ago
    No. Disk associated with your slice has persistent disk space. You also get a static IP.
  - mechanical_fish 19y ago
    +1, hilarious cat metaphor And, yes, the disk space and the IP, and apparently the percentage of CPU that you get, are all static. Very nice service, although I haven't automated my downtime monitoring so I can't speak to that.
hollywoodcole 19y ago
RimuHosting and Slicehost are top Xen VPS Hosting for cheap. Both have great rails and django communities to help.
- altano 19y ago
  I've found RimuHosting to be worth the small premium for sure. I've never had a support request take more than 15 minutes to be fully resolved in a competent and friendly manner... how many hosts can that be said of? So yeah, I highly recommend RimuHosting for Rails hosting or anything else you might need a VPS for.
staunch 19y ago
If Rails works reliably with SCGI but not FastCGI it can't be that difficult to fix. That's probably the easiest way to get it working for them. Dreamhost could just pledge $10k to have any FastCGI bugs fixed. They're the crappy shared host trying to live in a VPS/dedicated world. I agree with DHH that they should put up or shut up.
- Kaizyn 19y ago
  Everyone who sticks with web development long enough outgrows shared hosting, but they are a good cheap option for when you're starting out. The fact that you don't see the same sorts of problems from every other server-side scripting option (except maybe the Lisps) makes the Rails position seem more unreasonable.
Tichy 19y ago
I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before: "do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know, like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the popularity of their framework. Apparently since DHH built Rails for his own use, he doesn't care if anybody else uses it or not. Although I wonder how much the popularity of Rails contributes to the success of 37signals - would anybody even know about their web applications if it wasn't for the Rails hype? In any case, that kind of thing is why people still choose Java over Ruby.
- pius 19y ago
  I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before: "do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know, like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the popularity of their framework. I think this is merely the difference between a framework that is fundamentally open source and a framework that is fundamentally vendor-supported (e.g. SpringSource writing and supporting Spring). From my perspective, the Rails Core team cares quite a bit about their community, as their community is themselves. Any developer who has a patch or plugin is free to make it available. That's the beauty of open source.
  - Tichy 19y ago
    I don't really understand the difference, as Spring is open source as well? However, I guess SpringSource makes money from consulting, so it is in their interest to have as many people as possible adapt Spring?
    - pius 19y ago
      I'm not hugely familiar with Spring, but the impression I get is that it's not really open source. SpringSource, as a commercial entity, essentially controls the authoring of the framework and has a financial interest in adding features that will drive the widest user adoption possible. If this is wrong, please feel free to correct me.

39 points by pius 19y ago

pius 19y ago

Interesting, DHH runs his blog on SliceHost.

Readmore 19y ago
I have a couple sites on Slicehost and I love it. The only thing I miss from shared hosting sites is the easy to use management console for setting up email and such. Other than that Slicehost is the way to go.
- scw 19y ago
  A pet feature I wish they had was exposing a way to download the actual Xen image your site is hosted within. Then you could be developing your production server sans internet, and rsync the resulting image.
- Zak 19y ago
  I generally hate those consoles, as they make things work in unexpected ways. Recently, I spent a while tracking down a bug on a managed VPS with Plesk installed where mail sent by scripts on the server to the same domain (let's call it example.com) were going to local delivery at example.com instead of the MX entry of exchange.example.com (a separate server). Many times, I want the email system to share its login database with some web app anyway.
- spiralhead 19y ago
  What I would really love to see is affordable hosting like this but with the ability to do stuff like run a custom web server. I know this thread isn't really about hosting but has anyone seen something like this or is it even technically possible without going fully dedicated?
  - scw 19y ago
    Read more on Slicehost -- its exactly that; you have full access to a virtualized machine, and can do pretty much anything.
davidw 19y ago
Does slicehost have that Amazon crap where on any given day, you might open the box and find that the cat is dead, or do you get your instance back even if something happens to it?
- nickb 19y ago
  No. Disk associated with your slice has persistent disk space. You also get a static IP.
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  +1, hilarious cat metaphor And, yes, the disk space and the IP, and apparently the percentage of CPU that you get, are all static. Very nice service, although I haven't automated my downtime monitoring so I can't speak to that.

hollywoodcole 19y ago

RimuHosting and Slicehost are top Xen VPS Hosting for cheap. Both have great rails and django communities to help.

altano 19y ago
I've found RimuHosting to be worth the small premium for sure. I've never had a support request take more than 15 minutes to be fully resolved in a competent and friendly manner... how many hosts can that be said of? So yeah, I highly recommend RimuHosting for Rails hosting or anything else you might need a VPS for.

staunch 19y ago

If Rails works reliably with SCGI but not FastCGI it can't be that difficult to fix. That's probably the easiest way to get it working for them. Dreamhost could just pledge $10k to have any FastCGI bugs fixed. They're the crappy shared host trying to live in a VPS/dedicated world. I agree with DHH that they should put up or shut up.

Kaizyn 19y ago
Everyone who sticks with web development long enough outgrows shared hosting, but they are a good cheap option for when you're starting out. The fact that you don't see the same sorts of problems from every other server-side scripting option (except maybe the Lisps) makes the Rails position seem more unreasonable.

Tichy 19y ago

I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before: "do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know, like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the popularity of their framework. Apparently since DHH built Rails for his own use, he doesn't care if anybody else uses it or not. Although I wonder how much the popularity of Rails contributes to the success of 37signals - would anybody even know about their web applications if it wasn't for the Rails hype? In any case, that kind of thing is why people still choose Java over Ruby.

pius 19y ago
I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before: "do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know, like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the popularity of their framework. I think this is merely the difference between a framework that is fundamentally open source and a framework that is fundamentally vendor-supported (e.g. SpringSource writing and supporting Spring). From my perspective, the Rails Core team cares quite a bit about their community, as their community is themselves. Any developer who has a patch or plugin is free to make it available. That's the beauty of open source.
- Tichy 19y ago
  I don't really understand the difference, as Spring is open source as well? However, I guess SpringSource makes money from consulting, so it is in their interest to have as many people as possible adapt Spring?
  - pius 19y ago
    I'm not hugely familiar with Spring, but the impression I get is that it's not really open source. SpringSource, as a commercial entity, essentially controls the authoring of the framework and has a financial interest in adding features that will drive the widest user adoption possible. If this is wrong, please feel free to correct me.