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Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

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331–340 of 346 posts

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#331

Rails is over there is too much traction for Functional Programming these days, and Javascript seems to be the easiest language to explore functional programming and Composability. JS and Nodejs in my opinion are the best and most used langauges in 2018. Also Rails is not beginner friendly, if you are using Rails for a few yrs only then you can understand tons of quirks and pre written code in your controllers. If yo…

> JS and Nodejs in my opinion are the best and most used langauges in 2018 most used? probably. best? not even close. the main reason transpilers from other languages into JS became so popular this last decade is because JS is a horror shit show of a language.

I said for 2018. The App ecosystem has changed a lot since 2005 when rails was Released, more apps these days use a combination of JS + Firebase. For most CRUD styled SPI's this is the "best" way to write apps. Rails is no where in this ecosystem, it still depends on age old Nginx+SQL+Rails style, but the truth is most new apps want to start small. So for 2018 JS is the "Best" unlike Rails. The number of transpilers that exist for JS is an indication of JS invasiveness, its ubiquity and simplicity to transpile to. Since JS is a much smaller languaage than Ruby it is easier to transpile to. Some languages do give better tools of abstraction but at the end all those higher thoughts are implemented in the same JS which is a good indication of its usability, There are good and bad parts both in JS, but i dont think it is a complete shit show, just better educate yourself as a programmer to use the good parts. I think you are not aware of the interesting ways you can write composable code in JS. Rails depends on the Magic of Ruby, one can write great DSL's is Ruby and thus Rails, But Rails with its MVC toolchain alone does serve the needs of large apps, it is OK to do CRUD apps, but for large apps MVC breaks inside Rails. This is a big reason why a number of people have switched back to simpler ways to do things like Routing+Templates+Glue Code makes a webapp such as in Express.js , Rails is simply too big when it starts, with too much magic that people dont want to bother with. Which is why more Apps these days are activated in Nodejs frameworks. There is a reason for its popularity it isnt a coincidence, there are things people like in JS/Nodejs/Express.js that it is so popular.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#332
Here is an Interesting trend on Githut https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2018/2

Seems Ruby is on a downward trend, while other languages are picking up, Kotlin, Elixir , Lua , Clojure. Surprisingly Perl is also on an uptick. There is a high traction for Functional languages and this trend will increase as we transition to a more multicore world Ruby cant cut it in those environments, JVM would stay but it isnt sure which JVM lang will be preferred in that environment. Rails on the other hand is too convention driven and may not survive what is coming.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be accomplished just as easily by writing your own function just as jQuery did. My point is that such wording, as above, gave people the impression that jQuery was not javascript and you could not accomplish things in vanilla js. Such false impressions are still around today.

> by writing your own function just as jQuery did Sure, and we could all just design our own chips, hand code our own binary to create our custom programming language we use for everything... But humans have a neat ability to benefit from other humans' work.

An attempt to compare writing JavaScript to designing our own chips is a typical response I see from certain individuals online all the time. No knowledgeable person would ever do such a thing but I see it on reddit, and other amateur forums, all the time.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JS and Nodejs in my opinion are the best and most used langauges in 2018 most used? probably. best? not even close. the main reason transpilers from other languages into JS became so popular this last decade is because JS is a horror shit show of a language.

I said for 2018. The App ecosystem has changed a lot since 2005 when rails was Released, more apps these days use a combination of JS + Firebase. For most CRUD styled SPI's this is the "best" way to write apps. Rails is no where in this ecosystem, it still depends on age old Nginx+SQL+Rails style, but the truth is most new apps want to start small. So for 2018 JS is the "Best" unlike Rails. The number of transpilers…

The reason for its popularity is like with Java and C++ and C# - a combination of unfortunate feedback loops: companies are looking for cheap developers familiar with technology they already use.

Has nothing to do with JS’s or ecosystem’s sanity or (nonexistent) advantages over other languages.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#335
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not OP, but worked in science before. What you want is not to work in science on software dev ;) Scientists usually write extremely ugly, messy code, just to make it working and finalize paper for publishing. Remember, their focus is paper not code nor properly workable program. Things like testing, agile, tickets, code indentation, patterns - none of that you'll find there. If you aim for serious environments like W…

Thanks for the suggestions! I hadn't thought about places like Wolfram Research or MathWorks. I'll keep my eye on those. I'm working on picking up more C++ since that seems to be what everything I'm interested in is using.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hyperbole, but the point is that vanilla JS couldn't accomplish it easily without a lot of headache. Handling browser compatibility alone made jQuery extremely useful back when it first emerged.

It could be accomplished just as easily by writing your own function just as jQuery did. My point is that such wording, as above, gave people the impression that jQuery was not javascript and you could not accomplish things in vanilla js. Such false impressions are still around today.

I dunno - I don't think you're gonna win that battle. When a library is sufficiently advanced it often becomes a distinct entity (linguistically, at least) from whatever it's built upon.

See also: React, Pandas, Numpy, Boost, etc.

It might be confusing to those without the context to understand that e.g. React is built on vanilla JS, but I think it's pretty clear to most people that jQuery is built on JavaScript.

In fact the term "vanilla JS" mostly started in response to jQuery itself, so if anything I would argue that the term "vanilla JS" is to blame for what you're talking about.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#337

One thing you'll run into with rails in 2018 for web development is it's going to be hard to find developers and only getting harder by the day. Rails developers are aging. They are no longer your 20 year old hipsters, that stereotype has long since gone, they have families now and boy are they EXPENSIVE. React is what people new to web development are LEARNING and that's all you need to care about. You can get react…

Congrats! You're in DHH's twitter and in Ruby Weekly!

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#338
post #289

I work in a small full-stack JS/TS shop, and we've inherited a RoR application lately. I see a lot of criticism against the Javascript ecosystem. Let me tell you why I prefer working in Javascript rather than with RoR. It all boils down to the magic Rails advocates rave about, which is precisely what made my life a nightmare while working on that Rails project. Conventions over configuration is fine when you know tho…

I think a lot of devs are over the asset pipeline. Recently I built a small app where front-end performance really wasn't a concern. I stuck all of the assets in /public and called it a day. I also think you'll see more Rails apps using package.json and webpack for assets management.

As for the scripts section of package.json, that's typically managed via rake tasks, that can be listed via rake -T.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#339
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but worked in science before. What you want is not to work in science on software dev ;) Scientists usually write extremely ugly, messy code, just to make it working and finalize paper for publishing. Remember, their focus is paper not code nor properly workable program. Things like testing, agile, tickets, code indentation, patterns - none of that you'll find there. If you aim for serious environments like W…

Thanks for the suggestions! I hadn't thought about places like Wolfram Research or MathWorks. I'll keep my eye on those. I'm working on picking up more C++ since that seems to be what everything I'm interested in is using.

Keep in mind these are "conservative developers" - they work in C/C++ - meaning a preference towards C styled C++, a preference towards maintainability, and a preference away from the latest features of C++. That is being a developer, yet in a tech shop. There are lucrative alternatives too:

When one looks outside the traditional technology industries, there are a huge number of technology jobs as the tech person in a non-tech industry, being forced into the tech world. These tend to be C-Suite level jobs, so picking up an e-MBA is also be pretty good idea - to know how to talk and operate in their terms, how and why what you're doing for them is what you're paid to do. They have no idea, and very likely a history of being burned by low level tech consultants.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who don't know say these things. Try writing web applications in C/C++, it's a deluxe development situation. Where do you think web browsers come from? Everyone afraid of C/C++ are shooting themselves in the feet.

When I started to learn Rails, the intro was a Twitter-like messaging app. Somebody that knows what they are doing could turn that out in an hour. Is the situation in C++ frameworks very far off?

The same. Using Restbed, a C++ embedded web server framework, a twitter messaging app is about an hour of work.
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