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Rails for everything

literallythevoid.com

11–20 of 250 posts

Re: Rails for everything

#11

Inbuilt authentication is a very welcome addition. I've been using Django instead of Rails for the last 4-5 years (for business reasons) and that was one of the features Django provided which, upon reflection, seems like table stakes for a modern web app. The other glaring omission being an inbuilt admin interface -- which may have been added after I moved on.

> The other glaring omission being an inbuilt admin interface -- which may have been added after I moved on. with scaffolding and other rails generators with custom templates is that really a big asset? might not look amazing out of the box but you can find css templates easy enough too. maybe they should make an admin generator but rails is king of crud and if you need it ootb you can use one of the many gems.

I think so. You could also make that same argument about the new authentication feature, ActionStorage/Jobs/whatever.

Yes, of course, _there's a gem for that_ but after having used Django, it's really very nice to have those features included and not have to spend any time thinking/arguing about which Gem to choose and remembering/endeavoring to keep that Gem patched, etc.

Re: Rails for everything

#12
As someone who doesn't do enough web dev to justify learning Ruby just for Rails: how does it compare to Django? That's the only batteries-included web backend framework I'm familiar with...

Asking out or curiosity.

Re: Rails for everything

#13
As a single developer of an open source Rails project that has grown to serve ~120k MAU, I can attest to this article’s claims. One tidbit to add: ActiveStorage, which provides file attachment features, is another excellent piece of the Rails family. I’ve been using Dokku but looking forward to trying Kamal. Rails keeps getting better, and Ruby keeps getting faster.

Re: Rails for everything

#15

The essential convention over configuration ideas still prevail when you want to pile on functionality quickly and without boilerplate.

I was going to write a bite more about convention over configuration in regards to AI, but it didn’t feel super tight.

I think that the doctrine of convention over configuration leads to content that is much more legible to LLMs in training. I find querying Claude for Rails issues to be really helpful. I suspect would be very helpful to a novice.

Re: Rails for everything

#16
post #10

After using SQLite in production for a little while, I don't think "SQLite is all you need." Migrations are a pain, so any long-lived app will eventually experience pain. As an example, SQLite doesn't have a way to add a NOT NULL constraint to an existing column; you have to rebuild the entire table using a temp table.

Huh. TIL.

But in the rails context couldn’t you mostly manage with an ActiveRecord validation? I know it wouldn’t be ideal.

Re: Rails for everything

#17

Inbuilt authentication is a very welcome addition. I've been using Django instead of Rails for the last 4-5 years (for business reasons) and that was one of the features Django provided which, upon reflection, seems like table stakes for a modern web app. The other glaring omission being an inbuilt admin interface -- which may have been added after I moved on.

> The other glaring omission being an inbuilt admin interface -- which may have been added after I moved on. with scaffolding and other rails generators with custom templates is that really a big asset? might not look amazing out of the box but you can find css templates easy enough too. maybe they should make an admin generator but rails is king of crud and if you need it ootb you can use one of the many gems.

I was going to write about more things that I want, but it didn’t feel like it fit so much.

I would love a basic admin interface plus some auth.

It would be cool if rails mirrored some Devise helpers so that Pundit/Cancancan worked out of the box.

Re: Rails for everything

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other glaring omission being an inbuilt admin interface -- which may have been added after I moved on. with scaffolding and other rails generators with custom templates is that really a big asset? might not look amazing out of the box but you can find css templates easy enough too. maybe they should make an admin generator but rails is king of crud and if you need it ootb you can use one of the many gems.

I think so. You could also make that same argument about the new authentication feature, ActionStorage/Jobs/whatever. Yes, of course, _there's a gem for that_ but after having used Django, it's really very nice to have those features included and not have to spend any time thinking/arguing about which Gem to choose and remembering/endeavoring to keep that Gem patched, etc.

there's also administration-zero which is basically scaffolding for admin pages and would be similar to what they'd give you built in if they were to. they consider it outside the scope of rails' responsibility as scaffolding is so easy to make.

administration zero doesn't do much other than install a few gems, and include a scaffold that you can use to generate admin pages akin to django but you do get pagination and search and filters added on top. no magic though just rails scaffolds. https://github.com/lazaronixon/administration-zero

Re: Rails for everything

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other glaring omission being an inbuilt admin interface -- which may have been added after I moved on. with scaffolding and other rails generators with custom templates is that really a big asset? might not look amazing out of the box but you can find css templates easy enough too. maybe they should make an admin generator but rails is king of crud and if you need it ootb you can use one of the many gems.

I was going to write about more things that I want, but it didn’t feel like it fit so much. I would love a basic admin interface plus some auth. It would be cool if rails mirrored some Devise helpers so that Pundit/Cancancan worked out of the box.

try out https://github.com/lazaronixon/administration-zero

just a thing to install an admin generator scaffolds which you control fully after the fact. no magic just generators.

Re: Rails for everything

#20
I agree with everything except for Kamal. I'm happy to have someone else handle the server side maintenance. Maybe once my service grows so huge that handling it myself makes sense moneywise, but starting off that way is overkill when there's such affordable alternatives.
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