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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?

#81

Post by digisign »

Gigachad wrote: post #78
digisign wrote: post #34

Ruby has been on the downswing for a while, getting squeezed from all sides from the meteoric rise of Python on one side, JS/Typescript on the other, to higher performing static languages on another: https://octoverse.github.com/#top-languages-over-the-years It also has a funky syntax, while not a big deal, doesn't do it any favors in a C --> Javascript world. Django, golang, etc. are free. I don't recommend starting…

I think the server side rendering part of rails has largely become obsolete but the api backend side of rails is still going strong. Some day other things like rust might replace it but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Hmm, SSR is used quite often, it has just reached the boring stage. Also, rust is too BDSM for rapid CRUD building needs.

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

#82

Post by asfarley »

Here is a hint, at least every 6 months for the past 8 years there have been blog articles asking whether Rails is still relevant. It’s basically a meme at this point. We need a “no rails relevancy posts” sign like guitar shops need “no stairway”.

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

#83

Post by Gigachad »

digisign wrote: post #81
Gigachad wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the server side rendering part of rails has largely become obsolete but the api backend side of rails is still going strong. Some day other things like rust might replace it but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Hmm, SSR is used quite often, it has just reached the boring stage. Also, rust is too BDSM for rapid CRUD building needs.

Obsolete is probably an overstatement but its in decline IMO. The last few companies I have worked at have moved away from SSR which seems to reflect a wider industry trend. I have worked mostly in enterprise web apps which client side rendering suits better which might have some bias.

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

#84

Post by logicalmonster »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #6

Yes for three reasons: - There's lots of RoR jobs. - They keep improving it. - What RoR taught me made me a better architect in every other stack.

> - What RoR taught me made me a better architect in every other stack.

I really have to second this point. I'm not 100% sure if DHH was the one who coined the phrase, "Convention over Configuration", but he's the first popular technical communicator who I remember emphasizing it in a clear way. Simply trying to be consistent about naming certain things like models or database tables (singular vs. plural) is a big win for any project. Nobody gets everything right, but RoR is filled with lots of little smart choices like that that are worth considering for your own projects.

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

#85

Post by 0des »

masukomi wrote: post #73
philwelch wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Go standard library has all you need to stand up a basic HTTP service. Which isn't the same as Rails by a long shot, but it does fit in well with what a lot of places are doing these days.

yeah, you'll see this argument a lot. If someone feels like re-implementing all the wonderful conveniences of rails in Go, more power to them. However, that's a MASSIVE amount of work that you'll be doing _instead_ of actually making the webapp. Go is great, but it's built in HTTP support isn't even _remotely_ equivalent to the many years of accreted utility in Rails. To put it another way, it's a false equivalence.…

This is fairly inaccurate. The stdlib accomplishes a lot and unless you absolutely must have a wizard in your CLI to generate routes then you really aren't missing much at all. Having designed products in both, I'd prefer Go these days because unless I'm making todo apps there is a lot of decision and freedom taken out of my hands by using rails.

All of this disregards the speed advantage of go. There is no comparison between the two.

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

#86

Post by irvingprime »

kenhwang wrote: post #61
irvingprime wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure Go is a very good example here, compiled languages have a huge maintainability advantage in monoliths (at the cost of compile time). Ruby/Rails' culture is a huge contributor to why Rails monoliths are so much more difficult to maintain compared to other dynamic languages. Things in Rubyland just love to be global and manipulate things globally and go out of their way to make that behavior hidden.

Global? In "Rubyland?" No. That's just not true. Not at all.

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

#87

Post by tomca32 »

0des wrote: post #85
masukomi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, you'll see this argument a lot. If someone feels like re-implementing all the wonderful conveniences of rails in Go, more power to them. However, that's a MASSIVE amount of work that you'll be doing _instead_ of actually making the webapp. Go is great, but it's built in HTTP support isn't even _remotely_ equivalent to the many years of accreted utility in Rails. To put it another way, it's a false equivalence.…

This is fairly inaccurate. The stdlib accomplishes a lot and unless you absolutely must have a wizard in your CLI to generate routes then you really aren't missing much at all. Having designed products in both, I'd prefer Go these days because unless I'm making todo apps there is a lot of decision and freedom taken out of my hands by using rails. All of this disregards the speed advantage of go. There is no compariso…

There are a lot of things that rails gives you out of the box automatically which require either a lot of additional code in Go’s ecosystem.

CSP, csurf tokens, param parsing with array and hash map params, strong params, automatic response codes (201 for created for example), etags, … just from the top of my head. I’m sure I could find dozens more if I start looking.

All of those are possible in every stack of course but rails already gave you all of that from the time you typed “rails new”

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

#89

Post by letitbeirie »

davidfstr wrote: post #44

Personally if I was starting a project in the same space as Rails/Ruby I’d go with Django/Python instead. I prefer the “explicit is better than implicit” norm in the Python community over the “powerful yet mystifying magic” I find in Rails. (This is personal preference.) I also appreciate Python source code being easier to manipulate with tools than Ruby, since Ruby did not have a formal grammar the last time I check…

> "powerful yet mystifying magic" I find in Rails

Django might avoid this to some extent but Django rest framework has you covered.

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