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Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

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Re: Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

#21

Post by aliqot »

kyledrake wrote: post #18

I like Ruby but I don't like Rails. No idea if this is better now but I would get weird exceptions that would be from metaprogramming goofiness that was really difficult to debug and find documentation for, and it uniquely bothers me when I can't figure out where errors are coming from in code (same critique of async/nodejs). The general heaviness also just didn't mesh well with my programming style, I like things cl…

> The Neocities frontend is basically something much simpler built on top of Sinatra and I haven't regretted that decision at all.

Hey good job on Neocities btw.

I've noticed that a lot, and while it's not wrong to adhere to the "golden path", I take issue when it becomes instilled as rhetoric in a developer and precludes them from understanding or dignifying someone else's choices or questions when deviating from it.

There's always this aggression-of-curiosity in response, never a "well you'd do x, y, and z, but it's not recommended". It's always "Well why would you do that? That's wrong, you're supposed to..." and then an hour later after someone is red in the face just asking a question it comes down to "yeah I've never used 0mq before with rails, sorry maybe try Slack"

[edit: The comment I was originally replying to has gone from 1 sentence to a paragraph and is still receiving edits. Including this note for posterity just in case it looks like I'm talking to myself in a closet.]

Re: Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

#22

Post by yamtaddle »

cortesoft wrote: post #4

We have a lot of internal APIs written using Sinatra. I first started writing my APIs using Sinatra about 10 years ago. I had started with Rails when it first came out around 2005, liked it, but then ran up against a lot of issues. Sinatra and the Sequel gem were amazing so I switched to that, since I didn’t need most of what Rails had. Now I just use those two out of habit. Rails is a LOT better now, but i still jus…

Sinatra + Sequel is the only way I've ever loved using Ruby for Web development. After extensive contact with Rails across several projects, I've... concluded I simply cannot enjoy using it, is a nice way to put it, I guess. Sinatra + Sequel is a delight, though.

Re: Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

#24

Post by fknorangesite »

weatherlight wrote: post #20
capableweb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More code, more liability. If you can get away with achieving the same with less code, things tend to be harder to turn into big messy piles of code.

I'm not a huge fan of rails but, you can generate apps that don't include active record example of all the flags you can pass to rails when initializing a projects. --skip-git Skip git init, .gitignore, and .gitattributes --skip-keeps Skip source control .keep files --skip-action-mailer Skip Action Mailer files --skip-action-mailbox Skip Action Mailbox gem --skip-action-text Skip Action Text gem --skip-active-record…

Yeah and Rails is modular enough that you can easily pare it down even further - you don't need to `require` everything.

Re: Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

#25

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

capableweb wrote: post #10
quest88 wrote: post #7

What do you mean by "heavyweight"? Also why is it a problem that something is "heavyweight"? What problem are you trying to solve by asking these questions? What context is this question for? Are you curious how many people use a non-rails solutions for enterprise apps? Cloud apps? Personal projects? Apps you want users to pay for? A blog? I'd suggest stating what problem you'd like to solve by asking this question s…

> What do you mean by "heavyweight"? Rails latest release (7.0.4) have 386,970 lines of code in total, 310,779 of it being Ruby code. 3000 files in total. Just the `lib` directory of `activerecord` has 33,036 lines of code, across 369 files. By most metrics, RoR is pretty heavyweight, as their literal taglines are "Ruby on Rails scales from HELLO WORLD to IPO" and "A web-app framework that includes everything needed…

Compared to what? How about Django or Laravel?

And does ANYONE here want to compare Rails with the standard "enterprise" stack of Java and React, and all their implied dependencies (Spring, Lombok, etm.)?

Re: Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

#26

Post by fknorangesite »

huimang wrote: post #9

There's Sinatra for more barebones things, but honestly, homegrown solutions always grow into a shittier version of Rails. You don't have to use all of the features Rails provides. As others have mentioned, for simple APIs Sinatra is fine.

> homegrown solutions always grow into a shittier version of Rails.

An old joke: any sufficiently advanced Sinatra app is indistinguishable from Rails.

Re: Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

#28

Post by 1123581321 »

quest88 wrote: post #7

What do you mean by "heavyweight"? Also why is it a problem that something is "heavyweight"? What problem are you trying to solve by asking these questions? What context is this question for? Are you curious how many people use a non-rails solutions for enterprise apps? Cloud apps? Personal projects? Apps you want users to pay for? A blog? I'd suggest stating what problem you'd like to solve by asking this question s…

The question was obviously in reference to something like Sinatra or Hanami, or simply using individual gems.

Re: Ask HN: Who’s using Ruby for web development, without Ruby on Rails?

#29

Post by weego »

capableweb wrote: post #14
quest88 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why something with many LOC is a problem. Why does OP care about LOC?

More code, more liability. If you can get away with achieving the same with less code, things tend to be harder to turn into big messy piles of code.

What does liability mean in the context of a batteries included app framework?

If you ever plan on becoming liable for the framework code you're doing something very wrong.

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