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Returning to Rails in 2026

markround.com

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Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#121

Post by h4ch1 »

kshahkshah wrote: post #115
sensanaty wrote: post #110

I love Rails, but after working for a few places with huge Rails codebases and then several other places with .NET and other frameworks with actual typing, I just can't go back to Rails for anything that isn't a personal project. Working with a large codebase with an untyped codebase is just a nightmare, even with powerful IDEs like RubyMine that are able to cover some of the paint points. I wonder how good Sorbet is…

Are you hand coding?

Are we that far gone that "hand coding" is a term now? I hope there's an /s missing

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#122

Post by paride5745 »

sensanaty wrote: post #110

I love Rails, but after working for a few places with huge Rails codebases and then several other places with .NET and other frameworks with actual typing, I just can't go back to Rails for anything that isn't a personal project. Working with a large codebase with an untyped codebase is just a nightmare, even with powerful IDEs like RubyMine that are able to cover some of the paint points. I wonder how good Sorbet is…

Rust/Loco is unironically the most interesting framework right now.

Loco follows up the Rails formula pretty closely, and makes easier to learn Rust by taking care of a load of boilerplate code.

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#123

Post by bryanlarsen »

WJW wrote: post #89
IshKebab wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just keep up as you go He said "Updating a project that was started 5-6 years ago takes a lot of time."

Yes but GP said "In reality it's not that much".

Not much work every few months turns into a lot over years, especially if you skip a few of those "every few months" events.

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#124

Post by monooso »

louiskottmann wrote: post #35

I've been a Rails DevOps and nowadays a web one-man-show with it for over 10 years and I'd do it again. Not many frameworks have been thriving that long, and there's good reason. It packs everything, is tidy and productive, with a pleasant language to read and write. In the latest Stackoverflow survey, it's back at the "top 5 of desired stacks to use for next project" over a decade after its inception ! Give it a try…

Two decades. Rails was released in 2004, IIRC.

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#125

Post by etothet »

sarchertech wrote: post #98
etothet wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over TWO decades! Rails has been around since 2004, making it just slightly younger than Django. edit: Django was release in 2005

Rails is definitely older than Django. Django wasn’t released publicly until 2005. Django had private use before then, but rails was also in private use before it was released.

Thanks for the correction!

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#126

Post by etothet »

pushcx wrote: post #109
sarchertech wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails is definitely older than Django. Django wasn’t released publicly until 2005. Django had private use before then, but rails was also in private use before it was released.

Rails's public release was July 2004: https://rubytalk.org/t/ann-rails-0-5-0-the-end-of-vaporware/... Django's was July 2005: https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2005/jul/15/chipy/

Adding Simon Willison's announcement: https://simonwillison.net/2005/Jul/17/django/

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#127

Post by satvikpendem »

kshahkshah wrote: post #115
sensanaty wrote: post #110

I love Rails, but after working for a few places with huge Rails codebases and then several other places with .NET and other frameworks with actual typing, I just can't go back to Rails for anything that isn't a personal project. Working with a large codebase with an untyped codebase is just a nightmare, even with powerful IDEs like RubyMine that are able to cover some of the paint points. I wonder how good Sorbet is…

Are you hand coding?

Doesn't matter because LLMs also benefit greatly from typed code bases in that they can run the type checker and fix the problems themselves on a loop.

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#128

Post by sodic »

apsurd wrote: post #44
fy20 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a post last week about the best programming language for LLMs, and in the comments people loved Go, with the claim being it's very opinionated and there's really only one way of doing things. I'd say the same is mostly true for Rails apps as well. However having worked with Typescript for 8 years now... I'm not sure I could go back to Ruby without types. For LLMs thats important as well, the more guard rail…

TS is very AI native to the point i'd agree it's near magical in terms of contract. However, the fact its still the js ecosystem with react, thing is even though it's super productive in churning out the code, there's too many possible ways to do something. it's unwieldy. For example Claude is obsessed with making react context providers. it'll make tons of them to power every feature. and your app will happily hold…

> TS is very AI-native, to the point I'd agree it's near magical in terms of contracts.

I agree. Not only that, I feel like TypeScript is currently the only popular high-level language with a type system capable of communicating all meaningful information. It seems to have hit an LLM sweet spot.

Looking at other candidates:

- Rust is popular and has a powerful type system, but it forces you to program at a level that's lower than necessary for most projects, hindering usability.

- Go is much more usable and very popular, but its type system can't communicate much.

- Haskell has an excellent type system, but it's nowhere near popular enough, and its usability suffers due to esoteric constraints (laziness, purity).

- etc.

I don't know the recent developments in Python's and Ruby's type systems. They may be able to compete these days, but they were nowhere near TS's level in terms of contract a few years ago when I last tried them out.

And I admittedly have no idea what's going on with C# and Java, but I'd love to hear about it.

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#129

Post by bronlund »

mark_round wrote: post #63
bronlund wrote: post #7

I've never used Rails, but I agree upon "the state of the modern landscape". Instead of looking backwards, I tried to look forward, and what I found was Elixir and the Phoenix framework.

You're about the 5th person now in as many days who has recommended Elixir when I mentioned I was building a project in Ruby. I'll definitely have to check it out for my next project (whatever that may be!) Can you expand on why you found it so appealing or "holy crap, this is awesome" things I should look at first ?

When I first started out with Elixir, it was more the overall architecture that first sold it to me. It is remarkably robust, my impression is that you can more or less yank RAM modules out of the server while it is running, and the last thing which will crash is Elixir. And it is absolutely top in class when it comes to parallel processing and scaleability. Not only how it does it internally, but also how it abstracts this in a way that just makes sense when you are working with it.

When it comes to web development specifically, what really got me hooked, was LiveView from the Phoenix framework. It keeps a persistant WebSocket connection to the client which it uses to push DOM updates directly. Instead of the usual request/response cycle on the client side, the server holds the state and just pushes the diff to the browser. It just made so much sense.

Re: Returning to Rails in 2026

#130

Post by sodic »

fy20 wrote: post #8
hamandcheese wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the difference if my agent uses fucking Next, Nuxt, Rails or Django? The claim seems quite clear to me: "convention over configuration allows coding agents to be more effective". But yes, I do agree that the main line should say what Ruby on Rails actually is, not why it's good for your agent.

There was a post last week about the best programming language for LLMs, and in the comments people loved Go, with the claim being it's very opinionated and there's really only one way of doing things. I'd say the same is mostly true for Rails apps as well. However having worked with Typescript for 8 years now... I'm not sure I could go back to Ruby without types. For LLMs thats important as well, the more guard rail…

> However having worked with Typescript for 8 years now... I'm not sure I could go back to Ruby without types.

Very true for me as well. I've never worked with Ruby but feel the same way about Django.

Btw, if you're looking for a "Rails but with TypeScript," my colleagues and I are working on almost just that: https://wasp.sh/.

The main difference, besides the ecosystem, is that we're more in the "configuration over convention" camp. Wasp has a simple DSL for specifying said configuration, but it's about to be replaced with a TypeScript file.

Wasp is still in beta and nowhere near Rails-level polish. But, depending on your early adopter tendencies, you might find it interesting regardless. If you do try it out, please reach out and share your thoughts.

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