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Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?

#81

Post by wglb »

tptacek wrote: post #63
philwelch wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. To me, that gives me pause about the viability of ORM as an approach more than it vouches for Rails. ActiveRecord has so many limitations and footguns that using it as a serious product…

People have been saying this about ORMs since the original Rails Blog Demo introduced ActiveRecord, but I don't think we even have to engage with the argument, because no industry trend has made ORMs less relevant; instead, the sort-of collapse of the NoSQL trend has, if anything, made them more relevant. If AR was useful 5 years ago, it's useful now. If you're going to try to tell me that there's a countervailing tr…

Minor nit: ORMs and associated pain go back at least as far as Smalltalk (Objectivity/DB from 1990), pretty much before the rest of the world discovered OO. There was a lot of energy put into OO databases, to little avail.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?

#82

Post by joshmn »

adetrest wrote: post #60
joshmn wrote: post #3

Depends: * Do you like to be able to build things fast? * Do you prefer not having to reinvent the wheel? * Do you care if it's not the new hotness? If you answered no to any of those, run away! Rails is mature-ish. It's boring now. Its ecosystem is stable. Your sanity won't be tested. Reads... * Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial is probably the book you'll want to read to get a simple grasp on Rails (it can be overwhel…

Is "rebuilding rails" still relevant? The website has a 2010-ish design vibe and it seems to talk about rails 3 being cutting age while we're now at rails 5. One image has (c) 2012. Didnt know about the book, so I'm interested, but I can't tell if it's worth buying because of the above.

It's very much still relevant. It won't give you very low-level details but it'll explain a lot of the metaprogramming (others call it magic) that Rails has.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?

#83

Post by BillinghamJ »

ctrager wrote: post #49
BillinghamJ wrote: post #12

I'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.

So, what actual book/tutorial would you recommend for somebody who wanted to learn web development? Regardless of the problems with Rails itself, what's a better learning path that the Rails Tutorial?

I wouldn't. Just need to get stuck in and keep Googling anything you don't understand. Best thing you can do is find a friend who knows a bit about programming to show you what they know.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?

#84

Post by toyg »

wglb wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying this about ORMs since the original Rails Blog Demo introduced ActiveRecord, but I don't think we even have to engage with the argument, because no industry trend has made ORMs less relevant; instead, the sort-of collapse of the NoSQL trend has, if anything, made them more relevant. If AR was useful 5 years ago, it's useful now. If you're going to try to tell me that there's a countervailing tr…

Minor nit: ORMs and associated pain go back at least as far as Smalltalk (Objectivity/DB from 1990), pretty much before the rest of the world discovered OO. There was a lot of energy put into OO databases, to little avail.

I always wondered what really happened to OO databases. They were supposed to be the future... 20 years ago. And then MySQL exploded and everyone went back to tables. What was the problem: speed, difficulty, price, all of the above...?

I’d love to hear an insider perspective from anyone who might have worked on those things.

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?

#85

Post by wglb »

toyg wrote: post #84
wglb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor nit: ORMs and associated pain go back at least as far as Smalltalk (Objectivity/DB from 1990), pretty much before the rest of the world discovered OO. There was a lot of energy put into OO databases, to little avail.

I always wondered what really happened to OO databases. They were supposed to be the future... 20 years ago. And then MySQL exploded and everyone went back to tables. What was the problem: speed, difficulty, price, all of the above...? I’d love to hear an insider perspective from anyone who might have worked on those things.

We ran some benchmarks and didn’t see a lot of speed.

Also there is always an ecosystem influence issue with choosing databases

Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still worth learning?

#86

Post by mercer »

tptacek wrote: post #63
philwelch wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. To me, that gives me pause about the viability of ORM as an approach more than it vouches for Rails. ActiveRecord has so many limitations and footguns that using it as a serious product…

People have been saying this about ORMs since the original Rails Blog Demo introduced ActiveRecord, but I don't think we even have to engage with the argument, because no industry trend has made ORMs less relevant; instead, the sort-of collapse of the NoSQL trend has, if anything, made them more relevant. If AR was useful 5 years ago, it's useful now. If you're going to try to tell me that there's a countervailing tr…

What's your view on ORM's like Ecto (for Elixir) and possibly Sequel that, from my impression so far, stick closer to the underlying SQL? I find myself generally agreeing with your view on things, but my impression of ActiveRecord has somehow become relatively negative. I don't know enough to know what to think, so I'm curious how you see ActiveRecord in relation to the alternatives.
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