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Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

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211–220 of 346 posts

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#211

I mean... Let's pause for a minute and remove the year, and remove the language / framework. What are we trying to accomplish? If we know something really well and there are enough developers to support an ecosystem and the talent pool in your is big enough just use whatever you want. PHP in 2018? SURE. C++ in 2018? SURE (You masochist) Rails in 2018? Youre damn right I would. GO in 2018? OK. Fine. Whatever. This is…

>>C++ in 2018? SURE (You masochist) How exactly do you think AAA games are made? It's all C++ because there's literally nothing else out there which would give you the same performance(and also nothing that is supported as widely by Sony/MS/Nvidia/ATI).

AAA games tend to be C++ plus a range of other languages appropriate for specific tasks.

It's like saying your Ruby while ignoring SQL and HTML/CSS/JavaScript which combined represent far more lines of code and development time.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#212
post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

> your list of 30 random npm packages does not satisfy the requirement I like Rails, but to be fair, doesn't Rails also require a list of 30 random gems? Unless things have changed, authorization and authentication aren't even built-in, so people have to navigate random third party gems, and remember, you don't want CanCan, but you want the fork, CanCanCan. Again, I like Rails, and maybe it's still the nearest to an…

It's not a matter of how many packages are required; that isn't the issue. The reason "30 random npm packages" doesn't satisfy the requirement while Rails does is that Rails provides a high-level framework for integrating those disparate packages into a single cohesive application, while with npm packages you have to write that framework yourself.

Perhaps the best example I can give for this difference is Devise, an authentication plugin for Rails. Have a look at the instructions for setting up Devise on Rails: https://github.com/plataformatec/devise#getting-started You just add the dependency and boom, you instantly get a database migration for storing authentication data in your database, automatic integration with Rails's email notification system, a single command you can run to generate all boilerplate files, and a single line of code you can add to your controllers to automatically enforce authentication for any particular action. With a similar authentication package in a Node application you'd most certainly have to set all that up manually.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#214
Right tool, right job, etc. I built and run an internal tool for a company that went from a very dated coldfusion setup, to a cloud crm (expensive), to now simply using the rails application I built for them with fantastic sorting, searching, mass updates, login features, and export capabilities, you name it. It's has over 1M db records and is plenty fast for any mix of criteria.

Really cheap to run, low-low-low maintenance. I don't even need to touch it except if there are some security bugs that need to be patched and heroku handles backups automatically. In the event heroku has problems I run my own cron-job that does backups of the psql database and the application itself is put under version control.

I'm not sure there is another framework I could have pieced together such a smooth application with anything else in the amount of time and resources I had available plus without having to worry about it ever breaking because of some weird bug. Stability is very important for many businesses.

Once in a blue moon a new feature is requested and doesn't take long to make some changes. Now, would I use rails to fire up a basic website like I did in the past? No. I'd grab a static-gen like Jekyll and maybe some PHP to handle mail if needed.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#215
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"C++ in 2018? SURE (You masochist)" I know this is tongue in cheek, but if one is doing anything related to real time graphics programming I'm not aware of any good alternatives.

I think he means "C++ in 2018" to build a standard webapp, which definitely is masochistic because you can be much more productive on e.g. Rails. Just like how using PHP to build a real-time graphics engine is also probably masochistic.

It's getting better. I've been starting to dig into Crow to see if it might be a worthwhile option as a C++ web app framework:

https://github.com/ipkn/crow

https://github.com/jolks/crow-template

(Relies on libboost https://www.boost.org/)

Seriously, it makes putting together a simple API a breeze. I haven't had the chance to try anything more complex yet.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't see any advantage over Sidekiq, Resque and friends. Not saying it's bad but just that the Ruby community has got your back for any web development need you might have...when working with Django I didn't get the feeling I am working with superior libraries.

An advantage of Celery is that it doesn't require payment for an enterprise version to add things like scheduled tasks.

If you're talking about Sidekiq there's free open source solutions for that in Rails world. https://github.com/moove-it/sidekiq-scheduler https://github.com/ondrejbartas/sidekiq-cron Besides Sidekiq is just one out of many.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You shouldn't jump from one language to another every few months, but you should keep a close eye on what other languages are doing and ask yourself if switching would improve the code you write. Shouldn't that last sentence be "... if switching would improve the end product or service you are delivering." The focus should be on what people are paying you for. Better code doesn't always mean a better product, or b…

The two are equivalent in most cases. There's a relatively small set of problems where the choice of programming languages will have an effect on the product that doesn't come down to the code being more understandable and more amenable to change. Pretty much speed is the only concern for the vast majority of web applications, it isn't really that big a concern for most web applications, and even then it's less about…

Speed of development, or runtime speed? Language won’t matter for runtime speed except in the .1% of high load apps. In my experience speed of development will vary quite a bit based on language and quality of frameworks. I went from C# shop to Ruby/Rails and the pace increased substantially, though cultural differences are intertwined with language choices.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#218
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"things like Linq" It's really easy to accidentally create a simple Linq query that underneath turns into O(N^2) and suddenly the production application crawls to a halt. Actually happened.

That's why you should know where to write code optimized for perfomance and where to write code optimized for readability. It's the latter 95% of the time.

"It's the latter 95% of the time."

Still, that's no excuse to write readable code that for example runs in O(N^2) when there would be just as readable O(N) alternatives.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#219
post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

I'm exploring Nest [0] for my next project. It is a "glue framework" on top of Typescript and many Node libraries, with an Angular like style. Every Node library used has a framework module which provides the integration with the framework [1] so it appears to be both flexible and easy to use. I am just starting to explore Nest and I'm liking it, my previous experience on the backend was on Django for many years and…

I've been interested in trying out Nest too. While I've just been toying around with it, it seems to strike a nice balance between fast to write and easy to scale (in terms of growing the codebase). Hopefully then the path from MVP -> full product becomes smoother.

It also makes good use of what Typescript has to offer, which IMO is very much welcomed.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#220
post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

I'm exploring Nest [0] for my next project. It is a "glue framework" on top of Typescript and many Node libraries, with an Angular like style. Every Node library used has a framework module which provides the integration with the framework [1] so it appears to be both flexible and easy to use. I am just starting to explore Nest and I'm liking it, my previous experience on the backend was on Django for many years and…

I've been using nest as well on a project. It's nice, but it's miles behind Rails.
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