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Rails Has Turned into Java

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Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#71

Post by tmo9d »

jbail wrote: post #58
tmo9d wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I disagree entirely. After having spend two days debugging someone's versionless Gemfile / bundler problem on my CI server, I want someone to pay for my pain.

That's not Bundler's fault. It's the fault of the person who made the versionless Gemfile. There's really no comparison between using Bundler and mucking around with JAR files or Ant scripts in Java. I've even seen Python codebases with a Java-esque rats nest of dependencies that are just as painful to get setup correctly. Bundler is way easier. I've never been on a Rails project where it took more than 30 minutes to…

Hey, don't forget Gradle - http://www.gradle.org - Gradle syntax for declaring dependencies is similar to Maven.

But there's a very close comparison between Bundler and managing dependencies with Maven or Gradle. And there's a huge difference. Maven Central has never been compromised because they have a secure method for deploying artifacts, RubyGems? You've had a fun month with RubyGems, right?

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#72

Post by taligent »

jbail wrote: post #58
tmo9d wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I disagree entirely. After having spend two days debugging someone's versionless Gemfile / bundler problem on my CI server, I want someone to pay for my pain.

That's not Bundler's fault. It's the fault of the person who made the versionless Gemfile. There's really no comparison between using Bundler and mucking around with JAR files or Ant scripts in Java. I've even seen Python codebases with a Java-esque rats nest of dependencies that are just as painful to get setup correctly. Bundler is way easier. I've never been on a Rails project where it took more than 30 minutes to…

If you are using Play or Grails then dependency management is handled almost identically to bundler.

If not then Ivy is what is used mostly albeit far less elegantly.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#73

Post by evilduck »

tmo9d wrote: post #57
danielsju6 wrote: post #25

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 sti…

Who said anything about Dynamic typing? I agree with you that Rails still excels at allowing you to slap together a quick prototype, but I think that the world has caught up with Rails (and possibly bested it at this point).

It was a joke/metaphor about Ruby's duck typing, not a literal reference.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#74

Post by runT1ME »

RyanZAG wrote: post #30

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…

>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.

Sure. But how well does it work? I think it's obvious right now that the JVM is a fantastic piece of engineering, and java took us far, but that it's aging and inflexible.

Here's my problem with java explained succinctly in anther thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939624

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#75

Post by neya »

I think Rails is following the footprints of the Wordpress eco-system. The once 'blogging-only' platform has now matured into a complex, component based, 'also-a-do-it-yourself-CMS' with so much code that just makes it fragile.

I'd love to see anyone write something custom based out of Wordpress and not have it automatically break in the next few updates. I believe this is the same case for Rails too. One day you would update your gems only to find out that something on your site (devise? Carrierwave??) would be broken. I guess, the best approach would be to make it modular - You know, write some custom classes and inherit them when you need them, instead of depending what the framework provides you 'out-of-the-box', of course not to the point of making the framework itself redundant.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#76

Post by currywurst »

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…

Have you tried Java EE 6 ? JAX-RS in particular is a splendidly designed api for RESTful services. And then you can make single page apps instead of JSF. This method is even going have ide support in Netbeans 7.3 with wizard-driven Backbone/Angular app generation.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#77

Post by taligent »

ef4 wrote: post #41
axlerunner wrote: post #5

To answer the question...Yes, Java has changed for the better. Give it a go...you'll be impressed.

I actually had to write some Java recently for the first time in about ten years. I was hoping that the evolution of the language would make it less painful than it used to be. I was unimpressed. Generics are better than nothing, but still dramatically worse than having a reasonable syntax for anonymous closures. The newer iterator syntax is better than nothing, but still maddeningly lacking in the most basic type in…

> even though 95% of the time the difference has no impact worth thinking about.

Because the 5% of the time matters when you have a language that needs to run on everything from mobile phones to supercomputers.

I personally much prefer being explicit about what I want to happen.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#78

Post by hendershot »

danielsju6 wrote: post #25

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 sti…

+1 on keeping things simple and not using a "F"ramework for every concern from the very beginning.

>in Java you have to make those architecture choices day 1.

That's just not true. Very easy and advantageous to start out with say a simple container-less app with in-memory/flat file persistence and build up as you need. It's no different in Java and much more the norm in other JVM languages like Scala/Clojure.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#79

Post by gfodor »

stuff4ben wrote: post #69
danielsju6 wrote: post #25

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 sti…

So what you're saying is you like to re-invent the wheel? Suffer from "not invented here" syndrome much?

No, what he's saying is that engineering is about tradeoffs. Adding another framework introduces another node in the graph, and n edges. If you don't need fancy authentication and are pretty confident you never will, then don't add devise. If you don't know or understand why you would use some bleeding edge web server or framework, use what is well-understood and has the least moving parts.

Re: Rails Has Turned into Java

#80

Post by squidsoup »

saryant wrote: post #19
taligent wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... 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.

I've been using Play every since 2.0 came out and I'm a huge fan. It's just fun to work with.

Are you using Java or Scala with Play 2.0? Play looks like an excellent framework, but my perception is that Play 2.0 is very Scala oriented. Scala seems a bit daunting.
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