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Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

gilesbowkett.blogspot.in

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Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#51

Post by telent »

weixiyen wrote: post #41
stock_toaster wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The async callback mess is not really a problem, there is about zillion patterns and libraries to handle it. Doesn't that seem to imply that it is such a problem that people have come up with a myriad of disparate solutions to try to solve it?

If you have callback hell in your code, it's not because the problem hasn't been solved, but simply that you didn't put the effort to npm install a simple library. I agree that it is a problem if neglected, but most people don't allow it to be a problem in the first place. It's like knocking on PHP because it could be used for templating and business logic on the same file. Just because you could, doesn't mean you ha…

For "could be used for", read "was designed for".

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#52

Post by mythrowaway2 »

xinuc wrote: post #34
Uchikoma wrote: post #23

tl/dr What I take from the post: Guy has no fun with underlying technology, rewrites from scratch with more fun framework, does not care about current users, thinks this is offset by future users who can more easily use coffeescript.

what zed said about him is not absolutely wrong http://oppugn.us/posts/1276150607.html

I'm ranting about shit fucking loser pricks like Giles

A litany of bilious libel as useful an indicator as asking Kim Jong Un for opinions on Dick Cheney.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#53

Post by Tichy »

"It's a bloated meta framework that requires enormous amounts of peripheral knowledge to understand."

Unfortunately I think that might be because web development requires enormous amounts of peripheral knowledge to understand. It might be overkill for the first prototype of a new web app, but after a while that web app will probably acquire lots of peripheral hacks, too.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#54

Post by pjmlp »

Right on.

Being old enough in this industry I have seen technologies come and go, while a few are able to stick around for a little longer.

The Node.js hype will be gone in the next 5 years, being replaced by whatever is hype, while giving me and other consultants lots of money to port existing applications to more mature enterprise level technologies.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#55

Post by dasil003 »

I agree Rails has evolved to become many of the things that DHH first complained about in so-called Enterprise frameworks. But that's because a wider audience has wider problems to solve than Basecamp 1.0. At the end of the day, Rails 3.2 for all its complexity still "gets" server-side web development better than the antiquated Java frameworks that it replaced ever did.

What Rails really never got was client-side development. Even as it ushered in the era of easy AJAX support in 2005, it was based on a poor fundamental understanding of how to do good client-side development (to be fair, no one really had that understanding for javascript apps back then because we were lost in the weeds of browser compatibility). Over the years it's improved only in fits and starts, with bandaids and ancillary features like the asset pipeline and coffeescript (RJS was probably one of the worst ideas ever hyped).

So to me what the new crop of frameworks bring to the table is rethinking things from a deep understanding of client-side development, in much the same way that Rails rethought things from a deep understanding of server-side web development. I don't hold much hope for Rails to get good at client-side development due to the fact that DHH doesn't really like client-side development (as indicated by some of his commentary in the Basecamp Next caching article). He likes coffeescript because it's more like ruby and thus less painful, but the fertile ground of client-side development techniques will never be tilled by someone with this attitude. Javascript may not be the prettiest language, but it is powerful and paradigm-shifting when embraced to its fullest.

All that said, server-side ain't goin away, and Rails is still one of the best ways to develop server-side apps. If Rails was fast I would happily stick it on the server as I explored client-side development independently. Unfortunately I'm really starting to feel like Ruby performance is holding me back and that it will be impossible to fix regardless of how seriously Ruby and Rails core get about performance. Who was it that said "everything can be fixed with another layer of indirection, except performance"?

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#56

Post by ch0wn »

irahul wrote: post #39
bad_user wrote: post #15

Rails has always been bloated. That's what you get from frameworks that come with automation for common tasks. However, let me provide a counter-point ... I think that Rails 3 is finally a good framework that I want to use. Blogs written in 5 minutes (which you can still do in Rails 3) have never impressed me. What impresses me is code-reuse, modularity and readability. Which is why I preferred Django instead of Rail…

> Blogs written in 5 minutes (which you can still do in Rails 3) have never impressed me. I don't know. I liked the rails 5 minutes blog demo. I wasn't into rails from the beginning - I followed the recent one http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html I think it's the ideal example for demonstrating a web framework. 1. It gives basic introduction to the framework and installation notes. 2. It's simple enough…

> I haven't read Django's code in a while, but it used to be quite heavy on magic - not sure about the current status.

Those times are over, fortunately. Whenever I encounter a lower-level problem I tend to look through the code rather than the documentation, because it's usually much easier to find what you're looking for.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#58

Post by functionform »

The people who learned with Rails always make me chuckle. The only reason Rails got anywhere was because of scaffolding and the hype that surrounded it - which of course already existed in some form in other platforms. It's completely revisionist to think that platforms like Java or .NET didn't already have application creators and ORM.

The genius of Rails and DHH was the marketing which isn't surprising seeing as how much he loves Apple for it. They can always try to say the other platforms were bloated, but this is coming from people who thought full Unicode support at launch wasn't necessary.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#59

Post by functionform »

zedshaw wrote: post #37
drostie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the most important part: And as for overly ceremonial code, let me tell you about my balls. I actually have a rake task to scratch my balls. Somebody told me a good entrepreneurial programmer writes code to scratch their own itch, and I took them literally. The code uses a serial port to power an Arduino board. The Arduino's got a servo with a backscratcher attached. I keep it on a shelf at scrotum height…

Nope, the tl;dr didn't miss a thing.

A wild badass appears!

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#60

Post by mtrn »

bad_user wrote: post #15

Rails has always been bloated. That's what you get from frameworks that come with automation for common tasks. However, let me provide a counter-point ... I think that Rails 3 is finally a good framework that I want to use. Blogs written in 5 minutes (which you can still do in Rails 3) have never impressed me. What impresses me is code-reuse, modularity and readability. Which is why I preferred Django instead of Rail…

> Not pursuing hotness is the new hotness IMHO.

If you are like this, you'll probably like Knuth's "My advice to young people", http://www.webofstories.com/play/17152. The relevant part:

And I think one of the things that I would, that would sort of come first to me is this idea of, don't just believe that because something is trendy, that it's good. I'd probably go the other extreme where if something, if I find too many people adopting a certain idea I'd probably think it's wrong or if, you know, if my work had become too popular I'd probably think I'd have to change.

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