Yes.
Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
11–20 of 87 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#12I'd definitely say no. Going from little knowledge straight into Rails teaches terrible habits imo, and indeed it doesn't tend to be used for new projects much any more.
When you're learning to find your feet with software engineering, I'd strongly recommend avoiding languages where the emphasis on everything being "magic". It doesn't help you learn how things actually work.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#13If you want to - be very employable => JS/Express/[a-myriad-of-other-things] - be able to do anything (including trending AI/ML) => Python/Django (you won't be as productive as with Ruby/Rails and won't the same happiness experience [in regards to web]) - be very productive in Web env & enojoy your time => Ruby on Rails
How does working with Django translate to being able to work in ML? Merely due to Tensorflow having a python interface?
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#14No. It already has a large number of experienced enthusiasts chasing a diminishing amount of work.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#15Yes.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#16If you want to - be very employable => JS/Express/[a-myriad-of-other-things] - be able to do anything (including trending AI/ML) => Python/Django (you won't be as productive as with Ruby/Rails and won't the same happiness experience [in regards to web]) - be very productive in Web env & enojoy your time => Ruby on Rails
Pretty much. I almost always advise Python to learn "programming" and then moving to javascript to get a job cause above is pretty accurate.
I'd recommend JS first if it weren't such a complicated world with so many options.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#17I'd definitely say no. Going from little knowledge straight into Rails teaches terrible habits imo, and indeed it doesn't tend to be used for new projects much any more. When you're learning to find your feet with software engineering, I'd strongly recommend avoiding languages where the emphasis on everything being "magic". It doesn't help you learn how things actually work.
Unless you dig into the magic to learn how it works.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#18If you want to - be very employable => JS/Express/[a-myriad-of-other-things] - be able to do anything (including trending AI/ML) => Python/Django (you won't be as productive as with Ruby/Rails and won't the same happiness experience [in regards to web]) - be very productive in Web env & enojoy your time => Ruby on Rails
How does working with Django translate to being able to work in ML? Merely due to Tensorflow having a python interface?
As far as learning/investing in a specific language learning python while doing Django would avoid needing to learn python later, but Django it self wouldn't make you better at AI/ML.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#19If you want to - be very employable => JS/Express/[a-myriad-of-other-things] - be able to do anything (including trending AI/ML) => Python/Django (you won't be as productive as with Ruby/Rails and won't the same happiness experience [in regards to web]) - be very productive in Web env & enojoy your time => Ruby on Rails
How does working with Django translate to being able to work in ML? Merely due to Tensorflow having a python interface?
Probably fair to express that more broadly as Data Science instead of just AI/ML. Libraries like Pandas and Numpy are used all over the place, as well as Python being a relatively straightforward tool for doing data munging tasks.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?
#20The answer is probably that parts of Rails are worth knowing, and other parts aren't.
ActiveRecord and the Rails Controller/Model/Routing system are as good as anything in the serverside framework world. A few years back people might have started saying that AR was in danger of being obsoleted by "modern" databases, but SQL (and particularly Postgres) has come roaring back, and AR remains one of the best (arguably the best) SQL ORM.
At the same time, there's a lot of mechanism in Rails that is aimed at front-end work; templates, different template engines, helpers, the inscrutable asset pipeline. This stuff, not so much anymore. The energy you'd put into learning how to do idiomatic front-end in Rails, you should instead put into something like React (probably: into React).
People with a visceral "No" reaction to your question are probably thinking of what would happen if you started with a couple Rails books and tutorials and just went to town building a 2012-era idiomatic Rails application. Don't do that! But as an API server backend, Rails is fine, and does some things better than other platforms.
For whatever it's worth: we see a lot more Django today than Rails. 5 years ago, it was the opposite. People probably wouldn't recoil at the prospect of you doing an idiomatic Django application, even though it's not that much different than an idiomatic Rails application.