Rails3 or Express.js? who is more efficient during development?

Question

For a new web project like kijiji, if I want a faster development(the faster the better), which one should I go with? I know some ruby and javascript, but not an elite and never did a project on either of them. Coding is my hobby, not my job. Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Express is more along the lines of Sinatra, not Rails. It's much smaller, simpler and to the point than Rails. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

But what the heck, here are my thoughts while I'm here:

The Node community is fast growing, but it's still nowhere near the size or momentum of the Rails community. Overall you'll probably find more help and more kindred spirits with Rails. Node and Express will require more figuring out things on your own.

In my experience, the Rails/Ruby community have much better tools for testing than Node/Express. Hell, they have the best tools for this out of any community I've seen :)

Express is not well documented at all. The guide on their page is a decent start but it's just that. You will find yourself digging through code, obscure blogs and github repos looking for info.

Data access? It's built right into Rails and a core part of it. Express isn't concerned about your data layer at all (again it's more like Sinatra). You will need to decide on what kind of data access/layer you want to go with and see what kind of support Node has for it.

I really like both Rails and Express. But if the project was of any decent size, I'd probably pick Rails myself.