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Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

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Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#261

Post by ryanbrunner »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #217
ryanbrunner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Runtime speed, as an example of one of the few considerations when choosing a language that isn't related to code quality and maintainability.

I agree though that it's not relevant for nearly all web applications (and even for those where it is, it doesn't require that everything is done in a performant language)

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#262

Post by ryanbrunner »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #242
ryanbrunner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The two are equivalent in most cases. Yes and no. The most elegant technology solution in the world does mean squat if it doesn't solve the problem the client / user needs solved. Technology and solution are not the same thing.

Sure, but the choice of language is rarely a factor in this, barring very specialized subdomains where library support is limited to a few languages. There's very few web applications that couldn't have been written in virtually any modern language.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#263

Post by abhchand »

I'm not sure why this question keeps coming up in the developer community. Is Rails seen as a fad? Thousands of successful sites are built on it. It's incredibly easy to build even a basic app. It's the intersection of development speed and robustness that caters to the startup industry.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#264

Post by atomic-hedge »

bsenftner wrote: post #163
TimMurnaghan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using a small subset why on earth is it the right language? I had the misfortune to try to mentor a new quant who felt they had to write C++ "for speed" . But refused to use the STL as they were going to use a subset. So they wrote Fortran-like C++, array as the only data structure, bad lookup algorithms and leaked like a sieve. Things are in the language for a reason - if you've got the issue then you use…

Let's just be honest: today's dev's can't write in C/C++ because they don't have the formal training. They are primarily script language devs who can't work at the low level required by C/C++. The formally educated programmers who were taught low level large-scale systems programming are too few to create the programmer farms you all work it (which I left for scientific software development, where the devs are older…

I'm very interested in leaving the dev farms for something more interesting. I'm taking steps in that direction, but do you have any advice on how you escaped into scientific software dev?

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#265

Post by cutler »

wolco wrote: post #250
psychometry wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because even in 2018 PHP is still PHP?

What does PHP mean to you? What are your personal views? From a language perspective it's stable, fast, easy to deploy. Why wouldn't you choose to use it? For most it's not a difficult language to learn and start using.

Here's why I wouldn't choose it. When I look at a screen of idiomatic, PSRx-compliant PHP code I'm lucky if it contains 10 lines of code. Most of the space is occupied by KR-style space-wating layout plus blank lines between every line of code. Then there are the half-screen doc comments. Ruby, by contrast, is concise and code-focused instead of boilerplate-focused.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#266

Post by cutler »

joelbluminator wrote: post #85
lmm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think an all-in-one framework is an advantage? As soon as you want to switch something out you end up fighting the framework and the tutorials. Better to start with dedicated libraries that each do one thing - it's inevitably where you're going to end up. (Not that I'd consider an untyped ecosystem in the first place, especially one as fond of "magic" (e.g. monkeypatching) as rails. I have sympathy for jus…

I think the types argument is bullshit but it's just my opinion. Do python or ruby devs really feel they are less productive than java devs because they have no types? What I see happening is languages like java becoming more dynamic (var etc) and languages like ruby/python getting better IDEs (auto completion will continue to improve).

Java's var is only for type inference so nothing to do with dynamic typing.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#267

Post by philwelch »

bpicolo wrote: post #247
philwelch wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you, but Rails doesn’t span the frontend. Hell, the frontend isn’t even written in the same language.

Of course it does. Not in SPA-javascript, but there's a ton of support for erb views: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_view_overview.html

I’m aware of this; I did Rails development for like five years. Server-side HTML templating isn’t a complete “batteries included” frontend solution anymore. In fact, it’s usually the first part that gets thrown away.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#268

Post by pjmlp »

rplnt wrote: post #204
pjmlp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# is slowly getting there thanks to Unity efforts with HPC# and Microsoft's improvements on SIMD support, stack allocation and slices. Then on the browser you are stuck with GLSL 3.0 shaders, or any JS library that generates them on the fly. But yeah for the layer that actually talks to the metal, it is still going to be C++ for many years, specially thanks to the ongoing language improvements since C++11 revision.…

Well Unity engine itself is written in C++.

True, hence the HPC# effort to make it possible to port some C++ subsystems into a C# subset.

The effort is lead by two well known figures in the game scene.

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/11/08/were-joining-unity-to-h...

Specially relevant because their opinions regarding C, C++ and high performance game code are also well known.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#269

Post by vinceguidry »

tinco wrote: post #260
vinceguidry wrote: post #75

Apologies for the length here, but it seems like programming language and stack philosophy discussions simply require obscene amounts of length to produce fully-rational arguments. Trying to cut back invariably forces you to end the journey to philosophical truth with subjectively-felt emotion. Would appreciate feedback on what could be removed without compromising legibility. Programmers generally overvalue the util…

Straight up porting an app from Rails to Node.JS seems like a bad idea to me. Not that I'd ever consider using node.js, but the whole appeal is that you can quickly build small services, with either an integrating endpoint or a straight up api in front. If you're just replicating your Rails monolith you forfeit all the benefits. To be clear instead of node I would consider either Ruby because it is more comfortable,…

Preach it, brotha.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#270

Post by angersock »

M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #77
angersock wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript, Ruby, and Elixir are emphatically not interchangeable. Elixir is compiled, the other two are interpreted. JS is supported natively by all browsers and is at its core an event-driven functional language, the other two are not. Ruby is probably the comfiest OOP language out there, and certainly the one with the best standard library. These are not the same languages.

> Elixir is compiled, the other two are interpreted. How can a language be intrinsically compiled or interpreted? Sure, Befunge is one example of a language that's notoriously hard to build a compiler for but easy to build an interpreter for, but surely that can't be said for Ruby and JavaScript. V8 is a good counter-example to the claim that JavaScript has to be interpreted.

>How can a language be intrinsically compiled or interpreted?

This is a great example of an academic nondistinction that is completely worthless in practical matters.

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