What to learn - Ruby on Rails or ASP .NET MVC...given that am familiar with ASP .NET [closed]

Question

I need to learn and adpot the MVC methodology for building web apps. Which is the better way to go given that I have experience with ASP .NET Webforms - ASP .NET MVC or Ruby on Rails?

I've heard people going gaga over RoR and its simplicity and its features such as scaffolding, ActiveRecord, convention over configuration etc.

However, I fail to see what is so great about these. Most of them sound basic (the kind you'll not really want to use in production code - scaffolding for example) - and most of them sound like they are there in ASP .NET MVC in some form or the other.

Why should I consider learning RoR over ASP .NET MVC?

Are there benefits I do not know about or am unable to perceive?

Answer 1

I suggest you learn both!

I'm a professional ASP.Net developer by day, and a hobbyist RoR developer by night. Learning RoR will in fact make you a better .Net developer, and it's fun!

Also consider that one day you may in fact be able to write an ASP.NET MVC app in IronRuby instead of fussy old c# :)

Answer 2

There are many reasons I would recommend learning RoR over MVC

1. It's a much more mature stack. It's been around since 2005.
2. You get to learn a new programming language. "They" say you should learn a new programming language every year.
3. There is a very rich set of extensions to the base stack. Eg. HAML, Authentication gems, profiling and the list goes on and on.
4. You get to use database migrations out of the box. Something that is a bit of a breakthrough in database configuration management.
5. Dynamic languages give you a massive amount of flexibility.

That said: ASP.Net MVC is an awesome framework from Microsoft. I am not advocating dumping your stack and moving to the dark side. I just think it helps to have a broad understanding when it comes to technology.