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Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

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Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#11

Post by kenhwang »

perfmode wrote: post #5

How is helix these days? The idea of calling out to Rust was super compelling when I first read about helix. Is that problem still being tackled?

Haven't heard much from Helix since 2017, and it does appear to be inactive since. The limitation to only Strings, Integers, Floats, and Booleans made it pretty hard to use in practice given how Array/Hash/Object-centric Ruby is.

Though the latest Mozilla blog post about Rust FFI using protobufs makes me think rolling the same approach on top of Helix's groundwork with Strings should make it possible to pass around meaningful objects with a bit of overhead.

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#12

Post by dcosson »

stevenpetryk wrote: post #2

I still see Rails as perhaps one of the best frameworks to start a new generic web project in. The out-of-the-box functionality is just so perfectly tuned, and the fact that they're focusing on features that appeal to larger applications just shows how Rails has helped companies grow.

Eh. Rails is fine, and lots of other things are fine too.

Rails is amazing on day 1, even week 1 of a new project, vs piecing together your favorite separate smaller libraries into a web framework. That can be just what you need for a side project that you want to get up and running fast. But if you’re planning to build a business around it and work on this codebase for years, it’s crazy to optimize for day 1. (Not saying rails is necessarily a bad choice in the long haul, just that you should be picking it for better reasons than being easy to get up and running).

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#13

Post by neilv »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9
faizshah wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea it's really sad that at the hackathons I've been to you can hardly find one other rails developer. With rails you can build things fast and spend more time focusing on building cool unique features. But I go to hackathons and I can't collaborate with anyone using Rails or Ember. Also google cloud has a ton of awesome integrations for ruby and rails so you can build lots of fancy features quickly as well. The rail…

Ten years ago, you'd find plenty of people using Rails at hackathons—back when it was the new hotness. Maybe hackathons tend attract people who are interested in building stuff with 'cool' technologies as opposed to building cool stuff.

We've had so many generations of Web frameworks, but presumably it's still not a solved problem, because we keep moving to new ones.

Of course, sometimes the latest thing has a useful mix of properties that is worth the move. Though many hottest ones turn out to be popular only for a year or so, and then people lose interest.

I wonder how much a factor in the churn is the individual engineer desire to have the newest framework keywords on our resume, even when we can tell it's mostly a gratuitous rehash, because a lot of hiring is for keywords.

Or maybe more often we're looking for the new tools to provide additional advantage for projects (not resumes), but it's difficult to assess the holistic net payout until we've invested heavily in it for a year, whereupon we repeat with the next tools that seem to promise advantage.

I'm all about trying new tools all the time, especially as little side/toy projects, but it's odd that we are often betting important projects on less-proven new tools, when you'd think by now we'd have figured out and proven tools that would be hard to beat. (And I say this as a fan of certain tools that aren't proven enough, but which I wish a few startups would use for getting to demo/launch, so I can humbly see one way this happens.)

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#14

Post by pmontra »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9
faizshah wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea it's really sad that at the hackathons I've been to you can hardly find one other rails developer. With rails you can build things fast and spend more time focusing on building cool unique features. But I go to hackathons and I can't collaborate with anyone using Rails or Ember. Also google cloud has a ton of awesome integrations for ruby and rails so you can build lots of fancy features quickly as well. The rail…

Ten years ago, you'd find plenty of people using Rails at hackathons—back when it was the new hotness. Maybe hackathons tend attract people who are interested in building stuff with 'cool' technologies as opposed to building cool stuff.

I've been a mentor at a hackathon a few months ago. 90% of the participants were on their twenties. The chances they know Rails are lower than for the same demographic ten years ago.

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#15

Post by petepete »

hit8run wrote: post #6
ksec wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any Reason why Rails still does not include an any decent Auth by default? Edit: I remembering keep asking this question but obviously no answer was satisfactory enough that stick to my brain.

I think the defacto standard is devise but they want you to be flexible enough to roll your own or whatever serves you. I would like to have it built in though.

This sounds about right. And if you want something in between without rolling your own, Sorcery is excellent.

https://github.com/Sorcery/sorcery

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#16

Post by aaronbrethorst »

neilv wrote: post #13
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago, you'd find plenty of people using Rails at hackathons—back when it was the new hotness. Maybe hackathons tend attract people who are interested in building stuff with 'cool' technologies as opposed to building cool stuff.

We've had so many generations of Web frameworks, but presumably it's still not a solved problem, because we keep moving to new ones. Of course, sometimes the latest thing has a useful mix of properties that is worth the move. Though many hottest ones turn out to be popular only for a year or so, and then people lose interest. I wonder how much a factor in the churn is the individual engineer desire to have the newest…

If the average tenure at a company is less than two years, then why not bet your project on the new, hot technology? You get to put it on your resume, excite potential future colleagues with your buzzword compliance, and never have to worry about maintaining a project long term.

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#17

Post by _hardwaregeek »

faizshah wrote: post #8
stevenpetryk wrote: post #2

I still see Rails as perhaps one of the best frameworks to start a new generic web project in. The out-of-the-box functionality is just so perfectly tuned, and the fact that they're focusing on features that appeal to larger applications just shows how Rails has helped companies grow.

Yea it's really sad that at the hackathons I've been to you can hardly find one other rails developer. With rails you can build things fast and spend more time focusing on building cool unique features. But I go to hackathons and I can't collaborate with anyone using Rails or Ember. Also google cloud has a ton of awesome integrations for ruby and rails so you can build lots of fancy features quickly as well. The rail…

Agreed that more hackathon participants should know Rails. Although I will say that 50% of hackathon backends are unnecessary as nobody will check if you're actually persisting data/doing user accounts. And the other 49% would be perfectly fine with Firebase. But for those 1% cases where you need a CRUD API stat, Rails is absolutely unbeatable.

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#18

Post by _hardwaregeek »

I wish Rails had a way to use less features. API mode is great, but when I'm writing a GraphQL API for instance, I don't use controllers, I don't use views, I don't really use routing. I do use the excellently integrated ORM, database migrations, auth libraries (mostly devise), config environments, deployment options and CLI interface.

I could just delete the folders, but that's not the point. Rails is sitting on an amazing foundation but there's only one possible house that you can build.

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#19

Post by neilv »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #16
neilv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had so many generations of Web frameworks, but presumably it's still not a solved problem, because we keep moving to new ones. Of course, sometimes the latest thing has a useful mix of properties that is worth the move. Though many hottest ones turn out to be popular only for a year or so, and then people lose interest. I wonder how much a factor in the churn is the individual engineer desire to have the newest…

If the average tenure at a company is less than two years, then why not bet your project on the new, hot technology? You get to put it on your resume, excite potential future colleagues with your buzzword compliance, and never have to worry about maintaining a project long term.

Good point. The current short-timer employee conventions (as well as startups that can just be serial-entrepreneur'd if they fizzle) might remove some of the traditional incentives to use proven methods (to manage near-term risk, and to build for long-term maintainability/growth).

Re: Rails 6: B-Sides and Rarities

#20

Post by owens99 »

ksec wrote: post #4
stevenpetryk wrote: post #2

I still see Rails as perhaps one of the best frameworks to start a new generic web project in. The out-of-the-box functionality is just so perfectly tuned, and the fact that they're focusing on features that appeal to larger applications just shows how Rails has helped companies grow.

Any Reason why Rails still does not include an any decent Auth by default? Edit: I remembering keep asking this question but obviously no answer was satisfactory enough that stick to my brain.

Have you tried Devise? It’s not default but it’s one of the best Auth tools I’ve seen in any stack. I love it and use it in tons of apps.
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