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Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

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Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#61

Post by busterarm »

bascule wrote: post #27

I've been using Rails for a decade now, across many jobs, and one thing I've experienced fairly consistently is the worst Ruby web apps I have ever dealt with are the ones that weren't written in Rails. I've both seen and spent a lot of time rewriting overgrown Sinatra monstrosities with assorted non-AR ORMs. These apps were generally riddled with XSS since they didn't handle escaping correctly, often had unmaintaina…

I used Sequel once on a major project and as nice as it was, there was major pain. Pain I wouldn't have had with ActiveRecord.

I seriously would have gotten the job done in half the time, with less problems had I just used Rails...and I've written my own ORMs before - I have somewhat of a clue.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#62

Post by educar »

ben_jones wrote: post #57
educar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just wrong - almost 3/4 of Google's web apps depend on Angular from what I have heard from multiple Googlers. If a rare instance where an Angular release failure occurs, it shuts down Google's development process dramatically & costs millions in productivity. So you were quick to call somebody wrong based on complete heresay? Do you have any conclusive proof that they use it? Gmail? Analytics?

Literally 5 seconds of Googling [1]. Turns out the app that allows Google's Ad customers (i.e. their main source of revenue) to use the Google platform is written in angular. It's also one of the oldest and largest Angular apps in existence. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62RvRQuMVyg

I also found https://www.madewithangular.com/#/categories/google. It's a far far far cry from OPs original assertion that 3/4 apps in Google are made of angular.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#63

Post by fieryeagle »

Ace17 wrote: post #24
fieryeagle wrote: post #18

I suppose this is how you gain fame these days, writing sensational counter-arguments instead of coding? Oh right, the author is a 'Ruby Activist', he couldn't help it. PHP has won, Node has won and now yet another language up to debate? Having something with its own niche and cult doesn't mean anything if it's not suitable for work. It does help populate shortcut-seeking approaches such as Heroku and more CRUD apps…

The article you linked is pure gold ;thanks for sharing!

Yeah, such a poignant read that cuts to the heart of the problem - our needs to associate and express.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#64

Post by busterarm »

smt88 wrote: post #45
themgt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the average number of hours you spend on a given project? Honestly I think part of the reliance and importance placed on frameworks is that a lot of web dev (especially contract/freelance work) is still relatively small projects, stuff between 10-100 hours of work. So you're almost never spending 99% of your time solving unsolved, hard problems. You're building custom solutions to relatively common but specia…

> Rails didn't beat PHP and Java for webdev because hipsters think it's cool. I despise Ruby, PHP, and Java, but there is no objective argument that Ruby has "beaten" PHP or Java. It hasn't even beaten Python. It's tiny compared to the largest back-end languages. Edit: evidence below: - Ruby is used by 0 of the top 15 most-visited sites[1] (Twitter doesn't use it anymore). Java is used by 7 of them. PHP is used by 3.…

As a Ruby developer who gets paid to work with PHP daily, the reason 82.2% of all websites report a PHP backend is because 82.2% of all websites can only afford a PHP backend.

PHP developer salaries lag well behind market average for pretty much the same skillset. The tooling around PHP on the web is a wreck because you get what you pay for. Java isn't that much different -- I see tons of Java jobs I don't want in NYC for $60k wanting 5 years experience.

Who is taking all of these jobs we don't want? More is not necessarily better.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#65

Post by jeffdavis »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #33
EpicEng wrote: post #26

I'm sure I'm going to get piled on here, but whatever. I don't understand why those who spend most of their time writing web apps / CRUD apps focus so much on the tools they use to do it. "This framework's the best!" "No, this one is obviously better!" "My design pattern is better than your design pattern!" I don't know, maybe I'm a 32 year old curmudgeon, but I just don't see this in my area. I work at a lower level…

FTFY: "I don't understand why those who spend most of their time __using tools__ focus so much on the tools they use to do it." It should be more self-evident now. When there are many tools which meet the minimum requirements for doing a job, then the focus becomes not on which tool can do the job, but which tool you feel does the job the best (or you enjoy using). Carpenters argue about the best saws/drills, artists…

"Carpenters argue about the best saws/drills, artists argue about the best brushes/paints, musicians argue about the best instrument maker."

Is that actually true? I can't think of a single example of such an argument. I have heard recommendations, and heard various trendy tools being promoted (at least for music), but never an argument.

I think it has to do with transferability of skill. In music, carpentry, and painting, skill readily transfers to different tools even if it causes annoyance or a stylistic change in the result.

The stakes are much higher for web development; at least that's the perception. Skills probably transfer better than people think, but it's scary to have 10 years of experience and a high billing rate and then go back to "hello world".

It's much more comfortable to try to promote what you already know so that you don't have to do that. And it also avoids wasting time on a new framework that seems promising but never gets critical mass.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#66

Post by pjmlp »

vonklaus wrote: post #40
pjmlp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET is alive and well. Enterprise only cares about Java and .NET as standard backend stacks, regardless of the technology of the day HN posts how everyone is doing Go and node.js.

i actually have been interested in Java because apache has open sourced what seems to be the best collection of resources on the internet and they are almost entirely written in java for the java ecosystem. I also think I would learn a massive amount. I also am strongly considering Java and less strongly C. What are your thoughts on Java in terms of: * How much it would teach me about programming/software design, e.g…

Java might have its issues, but it is one of the languages with best tools available.

For example, most languages eco-systems lack tooling like VisualVM, Mission Control, JITWatch on their canonical implementations.

https://visualvm.java.net/

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaseproducts/missio...

https://github.com/AdoptOpenJDK/jitwatch

Also note that although many seem to be focused on Java being Oracle JVM or OpenJDK, there is a pleothora of JDKs both open source and commercial to choose from. With many other features.

For example, most commercial JDKs support AOT compilation to native code.

Or targeting micro-controllers with a few hundred KBs.

Also Java gets bashed by being all about a specific OO model, but VB.NET, C#, Eiffel, Smalltalk follow exactly the same model.

> Is google planning on phasing Java out and using Go?

Until they embrace Go in Android, ChromeOS, their Google Developer SDKs and Google IO sessions, I would say no.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#67

Post by soft_dev_person »

smt88 wrote: post #45
themgt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the average number of hours you spend on a given project? Honestly I think part of the reliance and importance placed on frameworks is that a lot of web dev (especially contract/freelance work) is still relatively small projects, stuff between 10-100 hours of work. So you're almost never spending 99% of your time solving unsolved, hard problems. You're building custom solutions to relatively common but specia…

> Rails didn't beat PHP and Java for webdev because hipsters think it's cool. I despise Ruby, PHP, and Java, but there is no objective argument that Ruby has "beaten" PHP or Java. It hasn't even beaten Python. It's tiny compared to the largest back-end languages. Edit: evidence below: - Ruby is used by 0 of the top 15 most-visited sites[1] (Twitter doesn't use it anymore). Java is used by 7 of them. PHP is used by 3.…

I don't disagree, but your last point is rather misleading as Java on Github also includes pretty much all Android projects.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#68

Post by fieryeagle »

EpicEng wrote: post #26

I'm sure I'm going to get piled on here, but whatever. I don't understand why those who spend most of their time writing web apps / CRUD apps focus so much on the tools they use to do it. "This framework's the best!" "No, this one is obviously better!" "My design pattern is better than your design pattern!" I don't know, maybe I'm a 32 year old curmudgeon, but I just don't see this in my area. I work at a lower level…

Not from me, you aren't. I'm an old soldier in this game (by webdev standards of 6 months for a new framework) and I have tended to switch over to the latest stuff almost every year (projects, job change etc). It's just a common disease and herd mentality in this field to sling the latest cools. Our productivity is generally shit because instead of cranking out working code, we try to fit more tools to the box, probably to combat the repetitiveness and boredom. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what language or frameworks we use, things still get fucked up because we never spend enough time to know the ins and outs of our tools.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#69

Post by collyw »

singlow wrote: post #47
EpicEng wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is the average number of hours you spend on a given project? That's a fair point; my project plans are usually measured in years, not hours. Of course there is ongoing maintenance, but that's not where I spend most of my time. I didn't mean to imply that tools aren't important, or that we shouldn't care. We absolutely should care, and I do as well. The difference is that I don't feel the need to spend copious a…

Part of the reason it matters more to web developers is that often our clients and employers do care what we use and if we love a particular tool it needs widespread adoption to be able to use it on real work. I have potential clients asking constantly if I can build their project with WordPress or Rails or Drupal or Symphony or whatever else they think is the best. It would be much better if they just came and asked…

Yeah, it made me smile when a non-technical friend had narrowed down the choice of languages for the project he wanted to build.

"Python, Java or " Python and Java are relatively opposite ends of the web dev spectrum, and he didn't code so it was likely based on rants from the programmers around him.

In the end his project failed because he couldn't find any Django devs to continue the project for a relatively low wage. He might have found some PHP devs if he had chosen that.

Re: Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room

#70

Post by reitanqild »

vonklaus wrote: post #40
pjmlp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET is alive and well. Enterprise only cares about Java and .NET as standard backend stacks, regardless of the technology of the day HN posts how everyone is doing Go and node.js.

i actually have been interested in Java because apache has open sourced what seems to be the best collection of resources on the internet and they are almost entirely written in java for the java ecosystem. I also think I would learn a massive amount. I also am strongly considering Java and less strongly C. What are your thoughts on Java in terms of: * How much it would teach me about programming/software design, e.g…

1. Java has had huge amounts of open source code for years. (Case in point: course provider sales representative telling my colleague somewhat annoyed that Java people are the worst because "they are used to get everything for free.)

2. Im going to read that as "... 1 month after finishing studies".

I will recommend starting somewhere where you get good colleagues. When I finished school I was sure I could never work with Java: it was hard and unforgiving compared to VB and PHP that I had picked up on my own.

After getting introduced to ides and working build systems however I was starting to get work done within a week and within a year I was confident enough to make a real difference.

Also I picked up a feel for just how annoying it is to be left with maintaining code based on abandoned commercial tools (old Delphi code).

3. No idea, but IMO no way banks are leaving it anytime soon so plenty of jobs and momentum for the next few years:-)

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