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Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

blog.seantheprogrammer.com

41–50 of 88 posts

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#41
I believe Sean's decision of moving to Rust has very little to do with Ruby/Rails. I think all of us have a point where we just simply want to move on to new things in life.

I really appreciate all the contributions done by Sean in Ruby On Rails and wish him all the best.

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#42
I am curious to what drives the next thing? Just wanting to use a new fresh language?

I saw the rise of Ruby on Rails; the driver was the ability to deliver wellstructured web applications fast. The language was a secondary thing.

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#43
post #3

I’ve seen a number of people move from Rails to Rust... is that really a common move? Seems like they’re very different and designed for very different things. Are people commonly building web applications in Rust? I know it’s possible but C++ has web frameworks too and that seems like a more apt comparison. I guess I’m just baffled by the number of people on here that I see pointing to Rust as the next project they…

I can't comment from experience, but I have seen a lot of people here say that Rust feels a lot like something between C++ and Python/Ruby. I think the idea is that besides the static typing (which a lot of people that use Dynamic languages, like me, would love to enforce at times), if you use it in a functional manner it's fairly expressive and not that different looking/feeling that the equivalent dynamic language…

Rust has that feel because it is new. I have no doubt that it will look like c++ in a few years. Full of "must have functions and extensions"

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#44

I’ve seen a number of people move from Rails to Rust... is that really a common move? Seems like they’re very different and designed for very different things. Are people commonly building web applications in Rust? I know it’s possible but C++ has web frameworks too and that seems like a more apt comparison. I guess I’m just baffled by the number of people on here that I see pointing to Rust as the next project they…

Me too curious about this. For me it's more understandable moving from Ruby to Elixir. But Rust is so different from Ruby...

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#45

I’ve seen a number of people move from Rails to Rust... is that really a common move? Seems like they’re very different and designed for very different things. Are people commonly building web applications in Rust? I know it’s possible but C++ has web frameworks too and that seems like a more apt comparison. I guess I’m just baffled by the number of people on here that I see pointing to Rust as the next project they…

Next optimal choice is calculated on the number of letters that needs to change on the resume.

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cut my teeth on Ruby and Rails, I've screwed around with Phoenix, and I'm currently infatuated with Rust. Earlier on I thought that, yeah, Rust is a great replacement for C and not something want to write a web app in. So, sure, I've got a bunch of little doodads written in Rust (mostly CLI tools). Now? The fluff I've written in Elixir is getting ported to Rust. The Rust tooling and community are just that good. I'…

I'm currently looking into learning Elixir, but your comment sprinkled some doubts on that. If deployment was easier in the Elixir world, would you have stuck with it?

If deployment was easier in the Elixir world, would you have stuck with it?

Perhaps, but Elixir was a very niche product for me. I'd use it for web apps and that's about it. Even then the ecosystem was fairly immature, and I'd only really want to use it in a setting that played to the strengths of Erlang. One of the big problems with the deployments being a gigantic beast is that there are maybe one or two people who understand the tooling around it. Great when it works, really lousy when it doesn't.

With the other languages being discussed (e.g. Rust, Go, Python, Ruby, Clojure, Kotlin) I've found far broader uses. I'm not going to write TUI/GUI apps nor would I write shared libraries with Elixir. Unless escript support was implemented you simply can't write things that depend on a shebang.

There's no harm in learning it, but the key is in being able to go beyond the hype and evaluate when it's worth using the knowledge you've just acquired.

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cut my teeth on Ruby and Rails, I've screwed around with Phoenix, and I'm currently infatuated with Rust. Earlier on I thought that, yeah, Rust is a great replacement for C and not something want to write a web app in. So, sure, I've got a bunch of little doodads written in Rust (mostly CLI tools). Now? The fluff I've written in Elixir is getting ported to Rust. The Rust tooling and community are just that good. I'…

I'm currently looking into learning Elixir, but your comment sprinkled some doubts on that. If deployment was easier in the Elixir world, would you have stuck with it?

Honestly Elixir has been one of the most enjoyable learning experiences I've had in years. Deployment is fine, but there are a few different things to consider (because you can do some really cool stuff using BEAM). But you can just chuck it on Heroku if you want something easy.

I also like Rust a lot, but I find Elixir pretty much frictionless to work in. Rust is basically you vs the compiler for quite a while. I've been using Rust for IoT work but I vastly prefer Elixir for web. And since I've been enjoying it so much I'm gonna start looking at Nerves (https://github.com/nerves-project/nerves) for IoT work as well.

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, they are for completely different purposes. I have the feeling that a lot of people (particularly the bloggers/more vocal types) jump into newer languages for no other reason than to position themselves as experts in said language/stack, right when it's getting more popular. I've seen this happen with Ruby/Rails, JavaScript/Node, and now Rust. In this case, it would have made a lot more sense to move to some…

I cut my teeth on Ruby and Rails, I've screwed around with Phoenix, and I'm currently infatuated with Rust. Earlier on I thought that, yeah, Rust is a great replacement for C and not something want to write a web app in. So, sure, I've got a bunch of little doodads written in Rust (mostly CLI tools). Now? The fluff I've written in Elixir is getting ported to Rust. The Rust tooling and community are just that good. I'…

Not sure when you were using Elixir, but releases are a good option for deployment now. This is supported with the distillery library (https://hexdocs.pm/distillery/home.html).

The master version of Elixir also has support for releases https://hexdocs.pm/mix/master/Mix.Tasks.Release.html

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#49
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cut my teeth on Ruby and Rails, I've screwed around with Phoenix, and I'm currently infatuated with Rust. Earlier on I thought that, yeah, Rust is a great replacement for C and not something want to write a web app in. So, sure, I've got a bunch of little doodads written in Rust (mostly CLI tools). Now? The fluff I've written in Elixir is getting ported to Rust. The Rust tooling and community are just that good. I'…

Not sure when you were using Elixir, but releases are a good option for deployment now. This is supported with the distillery library ( https://hexdocs.pm/distillery/home.html ). The master version of Elixir also has support for releases https://hexdocs.pm/mix/master/Mix.Tasks.Release.html

Last I checked distillery was Linux only (e.g. does not work on BSD), which is a deal breaker for me. But I wouldn't consider using distillery (and thus Elixir/Phoenix) on any platform given the haphazard nature of the support for distillery. There's exactly one person who knows anything about it and he supports it when he doesn't have anything better to do. Sure, in a smaller shop you could dig into distillery and try to fix things up. But when shit hits the fan, do you want to discover the hidden dependencies (e.g. bash vs POSIX sh)? I wouldn't want to bet on a single point of failure like that.

And the big problem for Elixir is that you don't see that level of mess or siloed knowledge with other languages. Say what you will about something like Capistrano, but it's an order of magnitude easier to dig into and support because it's not mashing together a variety of languages (erlang, bash, elixir). Some languages like anything JVM based (that compile down to JARs), Rust, and Go compile down into single artifacts quite easily. Others like Ruby and Python can be moved around with standard system tools easily enough.

Re: Moving on from Rails and What’s Next

#50
post #7
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't comment from experience, but I have seen a lot of people here say that Rust feels a lot like something between C++ and Python/Ruby. I think the idea is that besides the static typing (which a lot of people that use Dynamic languages, like me, would love to enforce at times), if you use it in a functional manner it's fairly expressive and not that different looking/feeling that the equivalent dynamic language…

Whether it can be used like an more FP-style Python/Ruby is one thing but whether it can replace Rails is a whole other question. This website is dedicated to answering that: https://www.arewewebyet.org (although looking at it again most of the content links are a bit old, but the library stuff seems current)

I think that a Web framework such as Flask (without the ecosystem of its plugins) or even Falcon can be replaced by a Rust app, as of today. But, I totally agree with the rest of the website. Before replacing a Django or a Rails project, there is some work!
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