Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rails is better low code than low code

radanskoric.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 249 posts

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#11

Post by jameslk »

Both low code and Rails have become a lot less relevant since LLM assisted coding became the norm.

Low code became less relevant because 1. LLMs solved many of the problems low code solves with better control over the output, and 2. you can’t use many low code platforms as an output from LLMs or other types of models (yet).

Rails became less relevant because Ruby is dynamically typed, and this poses a challenge for LLMs due to hallucinations. You don’t want to find out at runtime what things were complete bs from the model. Static typing isn’t a panacea to hallucinations but it’s a significant enough advantage, especially against such a dynamic language as Ruby. Even mere mortals struggle to understand the magic in meta programming DRY golf that many in the Ruby world have chosen to embrace.

EDIT: Any down voters care to explain why you disagree?

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#12

Post by rqtwteye »

namaria wrote: post #3

The low code space has been well explored. Excel is the flagship product in that space. You tell me if you want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of spreadsheets.

Not sure if Excel is low code. It has a pretty full featured language behind it: VBA.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#13

Post by rqtwteye »

simplemindedbot wrote: post #4

So low-code is faster to get started with little programming knowledge but isn’t expandable. OTOH, a language and framework that you’ve taken the time and effort to learn takes a little longer to get started but is ultimately more suited to more complex tasks. I think the takeaway from the narrative here is knowing when to switch from the low code platform and call it a PoC. I’d have cut that off around the point tha…

I usually go straight to the full language. It's pretty hard to find the point when to switch from low code to something else when there is time pressure.

Same with bash vs python. People say you should switch from bash once you have more than 100 lines or so. But at this point you already have some complexity in bash which makes the switch to python non trivial. So you usually end up patching the bash script in small increments as needed. It gets messier and messier but nobody wants to/can spend the effort for a full conversion

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#14

Post by stefan_ »

namaria wrote: post #3

The low code space has been well explored. Excel is the flagship product in that space. You tell me if you want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of spreadsheets.

I don't know if that is the case. Here is a low code flagship product few people have heard of: https://mathworks.com/products/simulink.html

It runs your car engine.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#15

Post by ebiester »

rqtwteye wrote: post #12
namaria wrote: post #3

The low code space has been well explored. Excel is the flagship product in that space. You tell me if you want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of spreadsheets.

Not sure if Excel is low code. It has a pretty full featured language behind it: VBA.

Retool has JavaScript. This is common for low code to have full languages attached.

The point is that you can do 80% of the presentation by wiring things together and only rely on coding for the most complex tasks.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#16

Post by bravura »

jameslk wrote: post #11

Both low code and Rails have become a lot less relevant since LLM assisted coding became the norm. Low code became less relevant because 1. LLMs solved many of the problems low code solves with better control over the output, and 2. you can’t use many low code platforms as an output from LLMs or other types of models (yet). Rails became less relevant because Ruby is dynamically typed, and this poses a challenge for L…

What are the best static languages + frameworks for shipping CRUD web apps?

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#17

Post by xrd »

I got stuck when he said he wrote a lambda function for the no-code project. How did a lambda function get categorized as no-code?

(I think I'm aligning with his point in the article. No-code really does not offer much long term. And, IMHO, no-code will never truly be no-code, so why not start with "Yes! to code!" and build from there)

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#18

Post by IshKebab »

namaria wrote: post #3

The low code space has been well explored. Excel is the flagship product in that space. You tell me if you want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of spreadsheets.

I don't particularly want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of Ruby code either, if my experience of the Gitlab codebase is anything to go by.

I agree with the author's point, if you replace Ruby with something less awful (Deno, Go, etc.)

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#19

Post by dallasg3 »

bravura wrote: post #16
jameslk wrote: post #11

Both low code and Rails have become a lot less relevant since LLM assisted coding became the norm. Low code became less relevant because 1. LLMs solved many of the problems low code solves with better control over the output, and 2. you can’t use many low code platforms as an output from LLMs or other types of models (yet). Rails became less relevant because Ruby is dynamically typed, and this poses a challenge for L…

What are the best static languages + frameworks for shipping CRUD web apps?

ASP.NET and C#

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#20

Post by cpgxiii »

stefan_ wrote: post #14
namaria wrote: post #3

The low code space has been well explored. Excel is the flagship product in that space. You tell me if you want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of spreadsheets.

I don't know if that is the case. Here is a low code flagship product few people have heard of: https://mathworks.com/products/simulink.html It runs your car engine.

More exactly, C code (hopefully MISRA C) generated from Simulink models runs much of the embedded systems in many cars. Although sometimes (cough, Toyota/Denso, cough) that generated C is then bodily assaulted by questionably competent embedded developers until it combines the worst qualities of MISRA C and low-quality embedded development, because, like many low-code solutions, getting (and keeping) everything in the low-code model is hard and the built-in escape hatch to a real programming language is not always a good fit to the problem at hand.

(As a nit, I suspect that Simulink is known and deservedly disliked by the vast majority of people with non-software Engineering degrees, given the omnipresence of Matlab in academic contexts.)

Post reply on HN