The Great Trio

Hi there,

I wanted to do a comparison of different MVC-based frameworks/application stacks flying around. I was looking lately at Ruby on Rails, Grails and ASP.NET MVC so this comparison is going to tackle those 3 guys.

I've deliberately left out pure Spring MVC, Monorail, all the statefull frameworks and other guys because I personally think they are so much not how like I'd like a framework to look like.

Let's start with Ruby on Rails.

1. Extremely nice, terse and concise language (+)
2. Very large user's group (+)
3. Easy to write CRUD-based applications (+)
4. Very testable (+)
5. Depends on the existence of a database (-, but it can be changed)
6. Tooling support OK (+)
7. Free IDE support is not so great (-)
8. Platform agnostic (when you take into account that you can deploy it virtually everywhere, for example on .NET, Java and pure Ruby interpreter it's mind bothering how far you can go with this guy) (+)

Let's quickly follow up with Grails.

1. The language is for sure better than Java but it still has this Java-feel I personally despise.
2. User's group not so large as in the case of RoR but still large enough (+)
3. Easier than with RoR when it comes to writing CRUD-based applications due to the dynamic scaffolding mechanism (++)
4. Very testable (+)
5. Does not depend on the existence of a database to execute but can use one if you'd like it to (+)
6. Tooling support OK (+)
7. Free IDE support is not so great (-)
8. Easy to deploy on any Java EE container so it runs everywhere (+)

And last but not least - ASP.NET MVC.

1. I love the language (+, yes, it's my personal preference). With the latest addition of "dynamic" keyword (and therefore ease of integration with dynamic languages) it's the most powerful language I've come across so far.
2. User's group is very limited by comparison to the other two. (-)
3. CRUD-based applications are definitely the strongest point of this framework but it's mainly due to the fact that it pushes you in no direction when it comes to database layer. You can choose whatever you want (for me it's a +)
4. Very testable (+)
5. Free IDE support (with tooling) is fantastic! (++)
6. Learning materials are through the roof! (+)
7. Deployable on .NET and Mono but not as broad as with the other two guys (-)

I guess when it comes to my personal preference I'd choose ASP.NET MVC before any of the other tools. However the plugin support in Grails and RoR is really amazing and one can accomplish a lot without writing even one single line of code which is an extreme productivity boost.

Have fun cuz that's all that matters!