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“Start Rails 5 development”

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Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps there will still be a large demand for sites that aren't SPA applications. Interesting times. It's isnt perhaps,99% of websites outthere arent SPAs.I'm pretty sure a majority of website you visit arent either. > I'm curious about the fate of Rails(and other frameworks like Django) in a few years, seeing that many web applications are moving to the Single-Page-Application model and the server simply acts as…

> It's isnt perhaps,99% of websites outthere arent SPAs.I'm pretty sure a majority of website you visit arent either. Currently 99% of websites are not SPAs, but I think a lot of sites will switch to SPAs in the future, since they offer a better UX(no full reloads, more interactivity etc) in most cases. I'm sure customers will demand these sort of sites once they start using more SPAs. > Why would you need a differen…

> I think a lot of sites will switch to SPAs in the future, since they offer a better UX(no full reloads, more interactivity etc) in most cases.

I'd argue they're a lot worse. More often than not, these sites kill the back button or the ability to bookmark a piece of content, are slow on barely old browsers and devices (still using an iPad 1st gen), tend to have fixed headers and footers that needlessly take up screen real estate or crazy pagination solutions, override scrolling and make it choppy and dysfunctional as a result, or outright crash mobile Safari by triggering out of memory errors.

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#22
post #7

I'm curious about the fate of Rails(and other frameworks like Django) in a few years, seeing that many web applications are moving to the Single-Page-Application model and the server simply acts as a rest backend. Perhaps there will still be a large demand for sites that aren't SPA applications. Interesting times.

I've been doing web dev for 6 years, full stack, back and front, mostly somewhere in the middle and front end.

From what I've seen, backend rendering ain't going no where.

This SPA trends is still wild west. Angular 1 is kind slowing down imo cause of the drastic changes in Angular 2. Ember is bloat. The javascript eco system is meh right now.

NodeJS people probably will argue against this. But seriously, javascript needs a module system. RequireJS kinda suck with grunt, it doesn't work so well other grunt modules. Most of the frontend people I've met barely even use Bower. Sure maybe one that it'll be the future but right now it's unclear whose the winner and if people are willing to invest in something that can be obsolete in 1 or 2 years. Seeing how angular 2 is going to come out eventually a year or two, why learn angular 1?

Oh there's the react library and other stuff going on too. I haven't use that but it's getting traction...

Grunt and Glup are duking it out. In general it's just meh. I wouldn't bet on Angular or Ember anymore. Rails and Django or whatnot at least they're stable enough and have tons of people using it.

I'm kinda sick of it and moving toward backend really. It'll be fun architecturing stuff mesos, dockers, etc..

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's isnt perhaps,99% of websites outthere arent SPAs.I'm pretty sure a majority of website you visit arent either. Currently 99% of websites are not SPAs, but I think a lot of sites will switch to SPAs in the future, since they offer a better UX(no full reloads, more interactivity etc) in most cases. I'm sure customers will demand these sort of sites once they start using more SPAs. > Why would you need a differen…

People always seem to prefer Sinatra over Rails for building a SPA backend, because 'rails is overkill'. Then they add Active Record, some autoloader implementation, rspec, caching, sidekiq etc and you end up with a cobbled together version of rails essentially. Rails-API is really nice here, strips out the things you truly don't need for a API in rails but keeps all the other infrastructure.

It works both ways though: I suspect that maybe most people on starting a rails project rip out half the gemfile as soon as 'rails new' has finished. Or they have their own skeleton projects with preferences already sorted out (rails api being a high point of the genre). Deconstructing a web framework isn't necessarily better than reconstructing one.

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's isnt perhaps,99% of websites outthere arent SPAs.I'm pretty sure a majority of website you visit arent either. Currently 99% of websites are not SPAs, but I think a lot of sites will switch to SPAs in the future, since they offer a better UX(no full reloads, more interactivity etc) in most cases. I'm sure customers will demand these sort of sites once they start using more SPAs. > Why would you need a differen…

but I think a lot of sites will switch to SPAs in the future, since they offer a better UX Actually I suspect that a lot of these kinds of sites will primarily migrate to native mobile apps. A full-stack framework is overkill as a backend for SPAs. I'm not so sure. HTML rendering is a pretty small part of what a complex framework like Rails does. You still need a database/ORM layer, user management and auth, routing,…

If you switch completely to native mobile applications you disappear from the web. That's a lot of people and a lot of incoming links. Mobile apps are less discoverable and they put the install time between "I want to see this" and "I can see this". Sites are trying hard to shave ms from the home page loading time, go figure how well it fits into the picture the minute it takes to decide to download something and get it installed. I think they'll go for a two pronged approach: traditional web site with content plus a mobile app (actually at least two of them). Furthermore, my phone can display an infinite amount of web sites but it can store only a not so large number of apps. And it doesn't have anything as convenient as start typing the name of a site to have the browser display the right url, inner pages included.

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#25
post #7

I'm curious about the fate of Rails(and other frameworks like Django) in a few years, seeing that many web applications are moving to the Single-Page-Application model and the server simply acts as a rest backend. Perhaps there will still be a large demand for sites that aren't SPA applications. Interesting times.

Ruby on Rails is still the most productive why to build web apps. Turbolinks prolonged Rails life cycle, as the best web framework, by two or three years.

However SPA are the future. Maybe Angular 2 will be good enough to switch. Maybe something build after Angular 2.

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Javascript frameworks (like Meteor) will grow in prominence given the promise of code sharing between client and server, better integration with single-page applcation and better libraries for server-side processing.

Or that compiles to Javascript for the client-side, like Volt (which I have been very impressed by): http://voltframework.com/

That looks really interesting! Are there comparable approaches using python? I know there are multiple python-to-javascript compilers that could fit the role of opal, but I'm not aware of a whole framework.

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#27
post #7

I'm curious about the fate of Rails(and other frameworks like Django) in a few years, seeing that many web applications are moving to the Single-Page-Application model and the server simply acts as a rest backend. Perhaps there will still be a large demand for sites that aren't SPA applications. Interesting times.

I've been doing web dev for 6 years, full stack, back and front, mostly somewhere in the middle and front end. From what I've seen, backend rendering ain't going no where. This SPA trends is still wild west. Angular 1 is kind slowing down imo cause of the drastic changes in Angular 2. Ember is bloat. The javascript eco system is meh right now. NodeJS people probably will argue against this. But seriously, javascript…

Not to one-up you, just since apparently it's worth mentioning, I've been doing webdev for about 9 years, and at least from my perspective backend rendering is definitely going out the window.

I started as a Rails dev in 2008, did ASP.Net before that, and last year I've moved from Rails to a pimped up Grape, which is a framework suited more for developing API's. Maybe it's just the sort of apps I'm building (basically SaaS) but I don't see any backend rendering in my feature, if I'm building it, it's going to be either a SPA, or a static site. (I built my sisters' band a single page static site, very nice).

Latest project is using Polymer, and no Javascript framework at all. I think you're right, Angular is extremely ugly, and Ember seems to do too much. But plain Javascript has become very powerful and HTML5+CSS3 reduce the need for UI toolkits.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see a super hard need for modules either, I define all dependencies at a single location, and just bind everything to window. The not binding things to window rule is only for library/component developers, if you're an app developer you should own window, make it your home and have everything as you expect it to be.

Anyway, what I'm hoping is that new Rails editions focus more on the SPA experience, they have been reluctant to. I use Grape, but I immediately pimped it out with all the niceties Rails has, including ActiveSupport and ActiveRecord, but also a console and decent logging.

What I do worry about is the amount of people embracing Node.JS over Ruby. It's crazy people would chose Javascript over any language at all in an environment they're not absolutely forced to. My fear is one day I'll be seeking a job, and all there is is shops building webapps in vanilla Javascript, wouldn't that just be a plain horror story?

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#28
post #25
post #7

I'm curious about the fate of Rails(and other frameworks like Django) in a few years, seeing that many web applications are moving to the Single-Page-Application model and the server simply acts as a rest backend. Perhaps there will still be a large demand for sites that aren't SPA applications. Interesting times.

Ruby on Rails is still the most productive why to build web apps. Turbolinks prolonged Rails life cycle, as the best web framework, by two or three years. However SPA are the future. Maybe Angular 2 will be good enough to switch. Maybe something build after Angular 2.

Would you please explain why my comment have been down-voted?

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#29
post #7

I'm curious about the fate of Rails(and other frameworks like Django) in a few years, seeing that many web applications are moving to the Single-Page-Application model and the server simply acts as a rest backend. Perhaps there will still be a large demand for sites that aren't SPA applications. Interesting times.

I've been doing web dev for 6 years, full stack, back and front, mostly somewhere in the middle and front end. From what I've seen, backend rendering ain't going no where. This SPA trends is still wild west. Angular 1 is kind slowing down imo cause of the drastic changes in Angular 2. Ember is bloat. The javascript eco system is meh right now. NodeJS people probably will argue against this. But seriously, javascript…

Take a look at PJAX. I've found it to be a nice model for rendering pages with a good balance of severe rendering speed and page updating flexibility.

Re: “Start Rails 5 development”

#30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always seem to prefer Sinatra over Rails for building a SPA backend, because 'rails is overkill'. Then they add Active Record, some autoloader implementation, rspec, caching, sidekiq etc and you end up with a cobbled together version of rails essentially. Rails-API is really nice here, strips out the things you truly don't need for a API in rails but keeps all the other infrastructure.

It works both ways though: I suspect that maybe most people on starting a rails project rip out half the gemfile as soon as 'rails new' has finished. Or they have their own skeleton projects with preferences already sorted out (rails api being a high point of the genre). Deconstructing a web framework isn't necessarily better than reconstructing one.

I'd beg to differ: at the very least it provides hints and conventions on common, useful, well-integrated gems. The Sinatra apps I've seen that had gotten a bit fatter over time tended to be all over the place, dependencies and quality wise (some good, mind you); whereas the deconstructed rails apps tended to be very similar, and easy for other developers to get up to speed with.

It's a small advantage, but it's enough for me to prefer it.

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