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Rails Has Turned into Java

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Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#21

Post by lkrubner »

adventureloop wrote: post #15
lkrubner wrote: post #2

In the year 2013 it is difficult to remember why Rails was such an explosive breath of fresh air, back when it burst onto the mainstage in 2004/2005. The essay that I think best captured the switch in popularity, from Java (and EJBs and Struts, etc) to Rails, was "The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts" by Bruce Eckel, written in December of 2005. He wrote: "One of the basic tenets of the Python language has been tha…

I know it is not the mode to comment to mention your own up vote. Rails might have deteriorated in ease of use, but I cannot imagine it being worse than Java EE was in 2004. Modern Java EE is a world of pain, even simple apps are difficult to build. The entire front end stack is antisocial, difficult to extend and anachronistic. I don't think anyone working with a modern java web stack could read this post about rail…

I think the point is, other systems have now emerged that can reasonably claim to represent the cutting edge of simplicity and ease. Rails held that distinction for several years, it was the reference point people used to criticize or praise other systems. But Rails is no longer the clear leader in ease of use or sophistication of 3rd party libraries. In response to Rails, lots of new languages and frameworks emerged, all of which offer a lot of new ideas about what the cutting edge is in 2013.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#22

Post by Cigano »

taligent wrote: post #16
Cigano wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changed so much that version 7 does not support 32-bit applications anymore. I was impressed, for real.

Really ? That is not what the installation guide says: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/webnotes/install/index....

My bank uses a security module written in Java. I had to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox because Java 7 for Mac doesn't have a compatible version for Chrome.

Mysteries from Oracle.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#23

Post by Amanda_Panda »

"RefineryCMS, Devise, Omniauth, Carrierwave, Unicorn, Rack Rewrite, Fog, New Relic, Foreman, AMQP, and Honeybadger, not to mention the extra magic that Heroku gems throw into the mix (backups and other fun)."

Just going through all those names makes me tired. Its like framework names are to software as band names are to bands.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#24

Post by tmo9d »

squidsoup wrote: post #10

There's not a lot of content in this article frankly. I also suspect the author has either never been exposed to an 'enterprise' J2EE or Spring app, or has simply forgotten what a labyrinthine nightmare those could become. Rails is more complex today, but it is still significantly easier than traditional Java frameworks.

I suspect that your suspicions are wrong because I wrote the article and I spend much of my day writing both Java and Ruby. I just find it easier these days to work with Spring 3. Why? Because the Spring and the Oracle folks reacted to Rails pretty quickly and came up with a lot of solutions that might surprise you.

It takes just about the same LoC now to do in Spring what I'm doing in Java. The difference is that the performance in Java is much higher.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#25

Post by danielsju6 »

This is bullshit. I'm no fan boy but you can't blame yourself when you've cornered yourself in an complex case of interdependencies. BREAKING NEWS: OVER-ENGINEERED PIECE OF SOFTWARE IS REVEALED TO BE OVER-ENGINEERED.

I don't use Refinery, Devise, OmniAuth, Unicorn, Rack Rewrite, Fog, AMQP, or Heroku.

I use Passenger with Apache or Nginx, self-host, and write my own core functionality like authentication.

Rails is still great at having an idea and throwing together a proof of concept in one day; running "rails s" still works out of the box. It still allows you to defer the hard choices, until you actually have to make them. If you've cornered yourself by making your stack too complex too early, that's your own damn fault—in Java you have to make those architecture choices day 1.

Dynamic typing: if you treat Rails like Java, it acts like Java.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#27

Post by tmo9d »

taligent wrote: post #7
calinet6 wrote: post #4

"... Java, have you learned to easy yet?" No, it hasn't. That's why we're using Rails. And to be honest, it ain't that bad.

"... Java, have you learned to easy yet?" Try Play, Grails, Vert.X. And you know what it isn't easy. Having to deal with Ruby's dependency nightmares.

Right, and I'm calling Grails, Play, Scala, Vert.x Java in that article I wrote. I think a lot of Rails folks walked into a closed box in 2008, and they should have. Rails was hugely different from the alternatives back then.

The world has caught up. That's one of the points I didn't quite make very well. Ugh.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#28

Post by jgjgcghjhhbfv »

kevinconroy wrote: post #6

No, Rails hasn't turned into Java. Rails has matured into a complex ecosystem. Java has also matured into a complex ecosystem. Frameworks upon frameworks is a recipe for complexity, potential performance problems, bottlenecks, and environmental/context-specific issues regardless of the language that you're using. Will there ever be a language or simple framework that is popular, solves all problems, and doesn't get m…

That is fine and true. But if you guys know this why do rails people love to bash on Java and act like rails is the second coming of Jesus. Fine, you love your language but why the unnecessary insults? That always bugged me. A community like that is toxic.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#29

Post by Skoofoo »

> Sure, Rails itself is straightforward, but the frameworks you slap on top of it can quickly become burdensome abstractions: RefineryCMS, Devise, Omniauth, Carrierwave, Unicorn, Rack Rewrite, Fog, New Relic, Foreman, AMQP, and Honeybadger, not to mention the extra magic that Heroku gems throw into the mix (backups and other fun).

You don't need to use any of these. I once tried to use Devise for a project. I fiddled with it in an attempt to make it work exactly the way I wanted, but eventually I gave up and just rolled my own authentication. It's not hard at all to do in Rails, and you end up with much simpler code. I also tried New Relic, but I didn't see much point to it (maybe it's more useful for apps with a ton of traffic) and they sent me spam until I asked them to stop several times.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#30

Post by RyanZAG »

I don't get the Java hate. The stuff in Java is not there just to make your life miserable, it's a result of thousands of people spending millions of hours on complex problems finding that certain methods work well when your source code base becomes too large for simplistic methods.

The fact is: Java works, and it works well. Ruby/Rails is getting there, as we see from larger and larger code bases being build on Ruby/Rail and needing more and more of the hated 'Java' features - because they work.

Any language can be used for a small project and work very well - precious few can still continue to work well at scale.

I've found a lot of the HN crowd to be biased in this area. I believe that comes from most of HN working in startups which means less legacy code, smaller code bases, and more focused products with less management bureaucracy and changes. A sizable part of HN is also younger and hasn't yet worked in an environment of sufficient scale to require Java's(c++, advanced RoR, etc) features.

I could be way off here - but if you're knocking this kind of complexity and haven't worked on a massive project - it might simply be your frame of reference and you should stop knocking it.

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