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Rails is better low code than low code

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Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#171

Post by glutamate »

glutamate wrote: post #168

If you are asking "well we could build this in 2 hours with low-code or 8 hours with rails" - then you are not the target market for low-code. To be able to build a rails app in one day takes years of skill and education and maturity. A lot of people or organisations want to build apps but don't have that expertise. Also, I don't see what is wrong with the outcome that at some point you have to rebuild with code. You…

Although i have to say i always found the concept of low-code silly. All code should be low code, and i think rails is actually a very good example of that.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#172

Post by cies »

stephen wrote: post #85
jitl wrote: post #6

I don’t want to build in a language without types, but low code is even less types than Rails. I’ve just never worked on a public app that was simple enough for Rails to feel good - Airbnb was rails but by the time I got there it was very much not simple. Internal tools in rails though, that is okay.

> don't want to build in a language w/o types Yep; that's the only reason I don't use Rails. I'm building "ActiveRecord but with type(script)" at https://joist-orm.io/ and have our own internal "kinda Rails w/GraphQL" going internally--so far we're at ~450 tables and still "feeling good" (no n+1s ever!), but definitely a long way to go before AirBNB-sized problems.

I hate ORMs, as you still need to break out to SQL regularly: why bother?

I'd go with Kotlin/SqlDelight or Rust/sqlx (or even jOOQ) these days to avoid having to deal with the overhead of an ORM.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#173

Post by RUnconcerned »

speleding wrote: post #141
Gigachad wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruby is my least favorite part of Rails by far. The lack of type checking makes every single gem and rails update extremely dangerous in ways that are incredibly difficult to predict. For example the redis gem updated to return an int from exists() instead of a bool like it did before. This doesn’t raise any exceptions because all ints work in if statements. They just always return true. Silently breaking all of the…

I agree that it's very bad they broke the exists() behaviour in a point release by changing the return value from a boolean to an integer. But I think strong typing is not the answer. It's a drag on productivity and I can think of several other ways they could have broken the user space API that would not have been picked up by strong typing. You really need good test coverage, and ruby/rails makes that easy. If you…

I totally disagree. I think not having static types is a drag on productivity and maintainability. I have to work with both Kotlin and Ruby codebases, and the Ruby ones are always a nightmare whenever you need to make a change deep within the application's core, even though the Ruby one has more extensive tests.

The idea that test coverage is a replacement for static types is nonsensical. I won't insult your intelligence and say that by great test coverage you meant testing the shape of your inputs, because only an idiot would say that would serve as a replacement for something that is done automatically by a compiler, but sometimes minor naming mistakes (like `job` instead of `jobId` when you're passing an ID and not an instance of `Job`) will make it past code review and will place a totally unnecessary mental burden on the next programmer who has to look at the code and figure out what exactly he's looking at. With static types there is no need for that, it's right there in the code.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#174

Post by bryanrasmussen »

glutamate wrote: post #168

If you are asking "well we could build this in 2 hours with low-code or 8 hours with rails" - then you are not the target market for low-code. To be able to build a rails app in one day takes years of skill and education and maturity. A lot of people or organisations want to build apps but don't have that expertise. Also, I don't see what is wrong with the outcome that at some point you have to rebuild with code. You…

> How many projects never even got to a viable prototype because devs decided to rewrite everything in flavour-of-the-month every 3 week

this part sounds pretty fanciful, my experience is at the worst six months for new library in your chosen language, and that you can generally talk them out of; 1-2 years rewrite fever in some is almost overwhelming.

on edit: in short I think even the least self-aware dev is not going to do rewrite cool new tech every 3 week, maybe once but not twice. So sounds a bit hyperbolical.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#175

Post by phartenfeller »

forinti wrote: post #166
phartenfeller wrote: post #124

Even though it is Oracle, Oracle APEX is exceptional at creating CRUD applications. The main benefit to other low code tools is that it doesn't want eliminate code but just the repetitive UI code. It still expects you to have skills in database development so you can achieve everything but generating a Report, Grid or Form from a SQL query takes as long as you need to write the query. And everything is customizable a…

Apex is nice, but it becomes hard to maintain larger applications. It also makes it so easy to create opportunities for SQL injection if you don't have careful coders. And it is also a great target for DoS attacks. Having said all this, it really is the only low code platform I would ever consider using, in spite of it being Oracle's.

> It also makes it so easy to create opportunities for SQL injection if you don't have careful coders.

This is not the case. If you bind values with :ITEM_NAME and use compiled statements (never dynamic string concatenated ones with "execute immediate') there is no chance of SQL injection.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#176

Post by dagw »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #159
dagw wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never seen a low-code solution work at all. I've worked quite a bit in civil engineering and GIS, and most places I've worked at have made very good use of a 'low-code' tool called FME for automation and ETL tasks. I even reach for it myself for many tasks, even when I am fully capable of doing exactly the same task using for example Python. For the right tasks it is simply the most productive solution. That bei…

I've never heard of FME before, but I don't do any GIS work. Are you referring to this? https://www.tensing.com/en/software/fme Tensing looks like they specialize in GIS.

Right software, wrong company. Tensing appears to be a FME reseller and consultant. https://www.safe.com is the company that makes FME. While they started in the GIS world, and this is very much where their roots and core user base is, they've expanded greatly over the past few years into becoming a more general automation, data processing and ETL tool.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#178

Post by phartenfeller »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #143
phartenfeller wrote: post #124

Even though it is Oracle, Oracle APEX is exceptional at creating CRUD applications. The main benefit to other low code tools is that it doesn't want eliminate code but just the repetitive UI code. It still expects you to have skills in database development so you can achieve everything but generating a Report, Grid or Form from a SQL query takes as long as you need to write the query. And everything is customizable a…

A former employer of mine banned Microsoft Access, because they didn't want critical business functions running from random desktop machines. I imagine they'd take the same view today to home made LLM-generated Rails apps. They instead said "if you need to write your own little CRUD apps, use our APEX instance that we support and have backups for."

> imagine they'd take the same view today to home made LLM-generated Rails apps.

Sounds like an effective solution. Even though some people might build a great application, but someday they might leave, and nobody knows how to administer this.

You can still write bad PL/SQL code, but at least everything is centralized and stored in a single database where you have an admin making sure that everything is fine. For other developers, it is straightforward to make small changes because 95% of the complexity just lies in the data model and the database code. You don't need to adapt to a specific infrastructure, frameworks and other dependencies, etc.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#179

Post by glutamate »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #174
glutamate wrote: post #168

If you are asking "well we could build this in 2 hours with low-code or 8 hours with rails" - then you are not the target market for low-code. To be able to build a rails app in one day takes years of skill and education and maturity. A lot of people or organisations want to build apps but don't have that expertise. Also, I don't see what is wrong with the outcome that at some point you have to rebuild with code. You…

> How many projects never even got to a viable prototype because devs decided to rewrite everything in flavour-of-the-month every 3 week this part sounds pretty fanciful, my experience is at the worst six months for new library in your chosen language, and that you can generally talk them out of; 1-2 years rewrite fever in some is almost overwhelming. on edit: in short I think even the least self-aware dev is not goi…

I admit it was an exaggeration for comic relief, but many projects have definitely not gotten to working prototype because devs wanted to use something fancy

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#180

Post by rsynnott »

throwaway42668 wrote: post #83

I never understood the "low code" microbubble that was being inflated. We went through that era already. We called them RAD tools, and they targeted the same sort of strange, mythical end user profile. Someone so technically capable and apt that they could navigate a dizzying domain of deeply buried checkboxes, property fields, and sprawling relationships & side-effects, but who was also simultaneously unable to unde…

It's particularly baffling because there's currently a _competitive_ "do programming without doing programming" bubble; LLMs. Whatever about one at a time, it's odd to have two approaches to the same false promise going at once.
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