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Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

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Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#301

Post by sdesalas »

yawnxyz wrote: post #68

I've settled with Svelte (SvelteKit and Sapper), after having spent lots of time with React and Vue. Svelte works in a way that jives with how I think and work, and I've built enough components for myself that side projects now only take hours to design and build into working prototypes. I think everyone needs to have a "home platform" where it's just mindless to get started. Regardless whether it's JS SPAs or Rails…

I was wondering why nobody was mentioning Svelte and Vue. I find either of these two options is more productive than React or Angular anyday.

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#302

Post by stereocodes »

MakerSam wrote: post #192

Google searches for React and node.js exceed searches for Ruby on Rails by 100% and 50%, respectively [1]. Some people have used this to argue that React/node are more popular than Rails. But I wonder if perhaps this discrepancy appears in Google Trends because it takes more google searches to accomplish the same thing in React/node versus Rails. I feel the Rails ethos of "convention over configuration" allows me to…

Are you looking for actual stats from developer surveys? you should check stack overflows yearly pulse: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-popular-....

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#303

Post by robertoandred »

1_player wrote: post #185
bauerd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried to implement interaction-rich applications such as calendars or text editors with server-side rendering? You won't be able to recreate the UX an SPA can afford, regardless of revenue.

Widgets require JS, of course. Javascript was born to sprinkle some of it on top of an HTML page, not to make a whole meal out of it. This is what GP is arguing about and I tend to agree. Single Page Apps are not worth the effort in my experience, apart from very niche use cases. The velocity proposition and fantastic developer experience of writing JS in the backend and frontend and data layer is overrated and misle…

"Sprinkling" JS means you end up with a messy mix and match of markup on the frontend and backend, inconsistent behavior, etc.

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#304

Post by jack_riminton »

Mezzie wrote: post #197
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed a lot of web devs over the years. The distribution on this question is surprisingly bimodal. One group of web devs is great at picking the right tool for the job. Simple web applications get simple solutions. The complex SPA solutions only get brought out for applications that require it. The other group of web devs has learned one very specific tool and they want to build their career around that to…

Have you noticed a difference depending on when they got into web development/whether they trained for it? One thing I'm noticing as I'm looking for tech jobs as a tech person who hasn't ever been a tech employee before is that a lot of the job listings are very heavily tool focused. I wonder if newer/junior devs are reacting to what the market is presenting (as you hinted at with 'The more complex they can make some…

Junior dev here (but a career changer at aged 35), I initially learned Ruby/Rails at bootcamp

80% of the market is looking for some React + backend and there's a huge pressure to learn such an SPA framework but I've steadfastly refused and have stuck to 'full-stack' Rails. Luckily there's a resurgence going on for Rails and I think it's going to last. Boring always wins in the end

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#305

Post by brightball »

MakerSam wrote: post #192

Google searches for React and node.js exceed searches for Ruby on Rails by 100% and 50%, respectively [1]. Some people have used this to argue that React/node are more popular than Rails. But I wonder if perhaps this discrepancy appears in Google Trends because it takes more google searches to accomplish the same thing in React/node versus Rails. I feel the Rails ethos of "convention over configuration" allows me to…

I have honestly wondered the same thing regarding Elixir.

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#306

Post by sdesalas »

paradite wrote: post #20

SPA and Rails are not mutually exclusive. For a simple MVP, Rails is enough. As features grow and frontend becomes more complicated, you can then evaluate again if you want to move the rendering part into a separate SPA while retaining Rails as API server. This was the path that my previous company took.

Totally agree.

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#307

Post by calt »

mirekrusin wrote: post #260
matt_mb wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reading docs top to bottom" is the answer to this frustration. It's strange that people don't think this is something they should do.

When people ask me how to improve their programming this is my first advice - speed read docs/stdlib top to bottom and keep writing a lot of little things. It’s amazing how many people choose painful path of learning through osmosis.

Your sibling comment recommends the guides not the full lib docs, and, assuming your chosen technology has both, I'm inclined to agree with them.

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#308

Post by jack_riminton »

jonahx wrote: post #181
krisrm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah whenever these SPA-slamming posts come up, I just try to imagine carpenters posting about why they switched to hammers from screwdrivers. They're just different tools that excel at solving different problems.

To use your analogy, what if a popular screwdriver company started a trend among young carpenters to use their screwdriver handles as hammers? And then large numbers of carpenters were driving nails with screwdriver handles instead of hammers? That is where the SPA slamming is coming from. It's not that people fail to grasp the concept of different tools for different jobs.

Exactly. 80+ % of all web dev jobs I see have some sort of SPA requirement

I'd guess that only about 20% need to be an SPA and the rest is cargo culting

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#309

Post by wtallis »

jmondi wrote: post #275
mirekrusin wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people ask me how to improve their programming this is my first advice - speed read docs/stdlib top to bottom and keep writing a lot of little things. It’s amazing how many people choose painful path of learning through osmosis.

If you want to make an app from scratch, you must first understand the universe. This is a ludicrous approach for most. Sure, if you learn from reading and love to read technical manuals, go for it. But to imply this is the best way for most to learn is completely ridiculous.

"Best way to learn" seems too vague to have a productive conversation about. If your goal is to become proficient with a framework, then reading the docs top to bottom is probably a great thing to do, but if you merely want to hack together a one-off project over a weekend then it's probably not worth investing the time to exhaustively learn about all the features and paradigms of that framework.

Re: Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs

#310

Post by dataminded »

I've been trying hard to make the migration from Django to Javascript for my dev work (95% of the time, I am building internal tools in a hurry) and it's been a major slog. I can write JS just fine, but spend all of my time trying to build a functional environment with the correct set of libraries and dependencies.
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