Question

I only want facts as far as possible. There are some things that ASP.Net does more quickly and easily than Ruby on Rails. I simply want to find out in which situations you would use ASP.Net, and which RoR handles better. So, given that you have a team that is equally as good at RoR and ASP.Net, where would you choose each technology? The obvious ones for ASP.Net are:

• Within a Windows Server company, ASP.Net is king.
• When you need to use Web References, Visual Studio and MonoDevelop are second to none.
• If you are desperate about speed, C#’s compiled nature would probably be faster or more efficient – please, if this isn’t true, let me know.
• When it comes to a CMS, Umbraco on .Net seems to be better than the RoR offerings. Again, if I’m wrong, please let me know!
• If using SQL Server or Sharepoint, then it’s extremely likely that .Net will be the better choice.

However, RoR would be better on:

• A Linux server
• Prototyping and smaller data-driven applications

I’m really worried that this question will get closed, but I really do need to know the answer to this question for my job. I’m now leading a few guys that default to Ruby on Rails for new apps but has a lot of experience in ASP.Net too, so I want to know that I’m making the right decision as far as a project-by-project basis comes along, and not just ‘this feels “enterprisey”, let’s go ASP.Net’. If I can ask it in a different exchange, that would be great. I do understand that for the most part, both will be the same. The HTML/CSS/Javascript set does most of the work here, and this is the only choice I need to make, so I need to know I’m making the best possible for the upcoming situations.

If there’s an article that addresses this, please point me in that direction, I’ve tried googling to no real effect. Thank you for any help that you can give me.

tl;dr: What situations suit the .Net stack and development workflow better than RoR, and vica versa.

Thanks again!

Answer 1

Here’s my 2 cents on this subject, but first of all let me make a quick disclaimer.

I used to work with ASP.net for about 3 years and have recently started leading a small team developing a web application in Rails.
At the moment I must say I am very biased towards RoR, but I’ll try to give an objective review.

ASP.net

I would go with ASP.net for a few things:

• Larger, data-heavy applications, rather than small and agile applications;
• Applications oriented for medium-large companies working with Windows;
• Very simple projects (if you’re working with entry-level developers).

For the following reasons:

• ASP.net’s compiled nature makes it a great “data-pusher”, that is, dealing with large datasets or performing costly operations.
• Windows is the OS of choice in practically every medium-large organization I’ve ever seen, and Windows Servers are often accompanied.
• Microsoft’s involvement is exceptional (See Eric Lippert‘s profile as an example).
• The IIS-MSSQL-ASP-VS bundle is a very “tightly-coupled” development suite, both in compatibility between its parts and in support.
• Microsoft support (I’m no authority on this, but I’m guessing being a paying customer gives you some official support).
• Entity Framework is a good and very easy-to-use ORM.
• Shallow learning curve, and plenty of courses, therefore good for entry-level developers.

Ruby on Rails

I’d go with RoR for the following:

• Any project requiring quick prototyping or running a tight schedule for a proof-of-concept (i.e: Start-up companies);
• Small-medium web applications;
• Any project with a small budget.

And here’s why:

• Development on Rails is the fastest I’ve seen, compared ASP.net and even PHP.
• Gems. There are a lot of things that are a pain to code in ASP.net and are solved simply on Rails with gems (Pagination, tree structures, ordered lists just to name a few).
  Also, things like HAML and SASS/SCSS are huge time-savers and practically built-in.
• Open-source, thus often requiring a smaller budget.
• Easy deployment. Many of Rails’ features take deployment into consideration (database seeding, migrations, etc.). I found ASP.net project much harder to deploy.
• NoSQL is much more common with Rails, and I assume better supported.
• Rails’ ActiveRecord is an excellent and easy-to-use ORM.
• Brilliant community.

However, it is worth noting that on many terms, both Rails and ASP.net MVC have a lot in common and often equivalent.

MySQL and MSSQL are both enterprise-level databases and both IIS and Apache are enterprise-level web servers.
You can find large websites running ASP.net and Rails (i.e: StackOverflow on .NET, Github and more on Rails), and both can deliver performance and scalability.
Both have support of 3rd party tools, such as MongoDB and Memcached through gems or external libraries.

In conclusion, it is my opinion that your considerations should take more into account the final deployment environment, ease of development, schedule, and the overall preference of your developers and peers than the technological differences between the two frameworks.