Ruby on Rails vs. Node.js

#1

Post by Apane » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

The question is which should new web developers take up learning, and why? Now, hold your horses - I know that comparing Ruby on Rails and NodeJS isn't completely a 1:1 comparison. Rails is a full web framework and NodeJS with ExpressJS is more comparable to the likes of Sinatra - that's not the point. The point is going forward which is the more progressive and powerful tool to use to develop user-friendly web applications?

Let's discuss...

Re: Ruby on Rails vs. Node.js

#2

Post by anonyfox » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

Meteor.js beats rails in terms of productivity. Also it's in most cases more performant (node vs ruby thing). It requires some re-learning of how to model your data (document store vs relational data), but in most cases it's worth it.

Also soft realtime is the default, shipping mobile/desktop apps aside with your webapp requires little to no code changes, and even offline working apps are doable with ease.

Rails was fine 10years ago and popularized many paradigms when it was important... Now the world moved on and requirements changed heavily. No bad rap for rails (it paid my bills for many years!) but it left the path of innovation and is now mainly on the maintenance road and trying to catch up and thats it IMHO.

Re: Ruby on Rails vs. Node.js

#3

Post by MalcolmDiggs » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:22 AM UTC

I think arguments can be made on either side pretty convincingly.

For me personally, the ecosystem matters most. So the choice comes down to Gems vs NPM. NPM tends to have what I need the vast majority of the time, and gets better every day; so I prefer Node.

Here's an interesting comparison of the ecosystems: http://www.modulecounts.com/

Re: Ruby on Rails vs. Node.js

#4

Post by ShiningRay » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 8:20 AM UTC

MalcolmDiggs wrote: post #3

I think arguments can be made on either side pretty convincingly. For me personally, the ecosystem matters most. So the choice comes down to Gems vs NPM. NPM tends to have what I need the vast majority of the time, and gets better every day; so I prefer Node. Here's an interesting comparison of the ecosystems: http://www.modulecounts.com/

There are lots of small, even one-line modules in NPM. So I don't believe the comparison.

Re: Ruby on Rails vs. Node.js

#5

Post by greenlinux » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

anonyfox wrote: post #2

Meteor.js beats rails in terms of productivity. Also it's in most cases more performant (node vs ruby thing). It requires some re-learning of how to model your data (document store vs relational data), but in most cases it's worth it. Also soft realtime is the default, shipping mobile/desktop apps aside with your webapp requires little to no code changes, and even offline working apps are doable with ease. Rails was…

Meteor.js is the future for personal projects. I do not see any jobs for Meteor.js in any popular job board like indeed.com.