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Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#51

Post by nobleach »

As in will you find plenty of recruiters hunting for Rails developers? Absolutely. I've seen plenty of startups locally (Salt Lake/Provo) that are green-fielding with Rails. I've also seen later-stage startups that are transitioning their Rails monoliths to Elixir - and they're trying to hire folks that are willing to work on 4 year old Rails monoliths. That's not a bad thing is Rails is your thing.

I enjoyed Ruby as a language quite a bit. Having experienced some of Rails' scaling issues, I doubt I'd personally pick it for my next startup. I know time to market is vastly more important than scale, but it's also not hard to pick a different tech that DOES scale easier.

So, yes, there will be plenty of Rails projects to work on for the foreseeable future. The only concern I'd have is if you're being asked to work on a very old code base. That can get really hairy, really quickly. But that's the case with any language/stack.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#52

Post by gls2ro »

mountainriver wrote: post #47
ericskiff wrote: post #23

We're still starting new greenfield projects in Rails every week, and I still believe it's the best foundation for SaaS products. It's great for developer speed and efficiency, the ecosystem of gems is amazing, and we've been able to scale every project we've needed to. We're incorporating React and GraphQL more these days for complex components and APIs but they pair nicely with Rails.

I work at a company with a large Ruby monolith and it’s a disaster. If you’re face deep in the Ruby ecosystem then I’m sure it makes sense, but trying to build services alongside it is truly awful. You want a scalable system that’s easy to write and will grow with you? Write basic Go services.

Why is a disaster?

I ask this genuinely as I am interested to see what pain point people have with Rails.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#53

Post by inopinatus »

mountainriver wrote: post #47
ericskiff wrote: post #23

We're still starting new greenfield projects in Rails every week, and I still believe it's the best foundation for SaaS products. It's great for developer speed and efficiency, the ecosystem of gems is amazing, and we've been able to scale every project we've needed to. We're incorporating React and GraphQL more these days for complex components and APIs but they pair nicely with Rails.

I work at a company with a large Ruby monolith and it’s a disaster. If you’re face deep in the Ruby ecosystem then I’m sure it makes sense, but trying to build services alongside it is truly awful. You want a scalable system that’s easy to write and will grow with you? Write basic Go services.

I work at a company with a large Rails monolith and it's a delight, and so is the monolith.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#54

Post by dsl »

ghotli wrote: post #30
newaccount74 wrote: post #16

I think it depends on the region. I started a project in Rails, and when I tried to hire people to help I found out there are very few people in my city who know anything about Rails. It's all Python and Java here. So I'd recommend to look for job ads on local platforms and check if companies are looking for rails devs.

But hiring engineers isn't constrained by region or location so this feels like an odd argument to me. Rails has been around long enough that there's surely no shortage of junior to very very senior engineers that will write code for you from wherever they happen to live.

Programming is not tied to geography unless you are dealing with physical equipment (you probably don't want three grocery store self checkout machines in your living room) or have any sort of security requirements for the project.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#55

Post by phillmv »

gls2ro wrote: post #52
mountainriver wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a company with a large Ruby monolith and it’s a disaster. If you’re face deep in the Ruby ecosystem then I’m sure it makes sense, but trying to build services alongside it is truly awful. You want a scalable system that’s easy to write and will grow with you? Write basic Go services.

Why is a disaster? I ask this genuinely as I am interested to see what pain point people have with Rails.

in my experience, the main pain point people experience is:

a) they don't like Ruby for whatever reason, b) they probably only deal in backend or only deal in frontend, and so don't understand the value of the bundled dev experience rails delivers, and therefore c) because of a + b they find the moderate learning curve to be extra painful, so they lash out.

at the end of the day it's all just code. why would it be harder to integrate a service in Rails than in Go? of course it isn't.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#56

Post by tomc1985 »

10-years-plus Rails dev here, I still get requests to connect from recruiters for Rails positions at least weekly, and my LinkedIn says at the very top that I am not seeking employment

Judging by the responses here, Rails is no longer fashionable. I find it to be quite boring and predictable, which is how I like my frameworks to be

Just stay the hell away from React and it's great

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#57

Post by irvingprime »

mountainriver wrote: post #47
ericskiff wrote: post #23

We're still starting new greenfield projects in Rails every week, and I still believe it's the best foundation for SaaS products. It's great for developer speed and efficiency, the ecosystem of gems is amazing, and we've been able to scale every project we've needed to. We're incorporating React and GraphQL more these days for complex components and APIs but they pair nicely with Rails.

I work at a company with a large Ruby monolith and it’s a disaster. If you’re face deep in the Ruby ecosystem then I’m sure it makes sense, but trying to build services alongside it is truly awful. You want a scalable system that’s easy to write and will grow with you? Write basic Go services.

Rails does not have to be written as a monolith. Typically, junior programmers who are trying to move very fast do that. Most of the places where I have talked to people who have a monolith are looking for ways to split it into services.

If you wrote a system in Go as a monolith, it would be hard to trim down, too. Architecture matters MUCH more than the implementation language.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#58

Post by gherkinnn »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #21

I wouldn't choose RoR as a new tech to pick up in 2022. Think of it like a more stylish PHP - lots of it out there, but mostly not in companies working on things that are compelling, and the market share is on the decline.

Github, Airbnb, Stripe, and Gitlab all use Ruby (on Rails) to a significant extend. Compelling things, if you ask me. Stripe is even developing Sorbet [0], a Ruby type checker.

Not that those are reason enough to use it. But I wouldn't call it the wrong decision either.

0 - https://sorbet.org/

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#59

Post by ysavir »

gls2ro wrote: post #52
mountainriver wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a company with a large Ruby monolith and it’s a disaster. If you’re face deep in the Ruby ecosystem then I’m sure it makes sense, but trying to build services alongside it is truly awful. You want a scalable system that’s easy to write and will grow with you? Write basic Go services.

Why is a disaster? I ask this genuinely as I am interested to see what pain point people have with Rails.

Two primary reasons:

1. Ruby is a very flexible language, and that has its ups and downs. While it makes it a very pleasurable easily modifiable syntax, it also leaves a lot of room for bad patterns. Ruby won't judge someone for taking an ill-advised approach to a problem, so it's easy for newcomers or novices to lay foundations that cause trouble later on.

2. Ruby is very prominent in startups, which are the companies most interested in immediate results. This often leads to favoring short-term advantages such as getting a feature out today to secure a deal rather than long-term advantages such as taking the time to keep a maintainable code base. Some startups with strict budgets will also hire people with less experience early on, leading this to pair with point 1 more often than we'd like.

That said, I'm a Ruby dev and have no interest in working in any other language (other than JS on the frontend). It's a beautiful tool to those who treat it well and I'll happily use it for just about any project.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?

#60

Post by gls2ro »

For people in this thread comparing _Rails_ with _Go_ can you please help me understand something about Go: Is it a language that also has in std/core library web framework like support? Like PHP?

I ask as I dont understand why people say drop Rails and learn Go. And I am looking to learn a new language along with Ruby and Elixir.

Why is Go compared with Rails and not with Ruby?

If Go does not include a default support for web frameworks then what web framework would you suggest for doing a web SaaS like management of posting on social media?

I dont want to create this but i use it as an example as it has image uploads, date/time, jobs, … things I can do easily in Rails and have already battle tested solutions available.

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