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DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
21–30 of 135 posts
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#22I completely agree on one aspect, anywhere I go, the kitchen sink is missing. You want to compress responses? well, there is an npm / jar / pip library for that. Want to have ORM? just npm / pip / "your package manager here" and you are done.
You can say a lot about Rails but I like the idea that everything I commonly need as a web developer is most likely already in the framework, and there is usually a best practice way to do things. Options are great, but moving out of plumbing and into generating value to customers is still having a value.
If you don't like opinionated, batteries included solutions then Rails is not for you.
However there are other solutions that kind-of cloned some aspects of Rails. Playframework (Scala has a lot more similarities to Ruby IMHO than to Java, at least in philosophy). Also Spring Boot or JHipster (Spring boot + Yeoman - super opinionated)
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#23I admire the way DHH writes .. confident and persuasive. However, I'd just like to point out that in the same span of time JavaEE has undergone significant simplification (omakase API standards, anyone ;)) and if you check out the work of Adam Bien, you'll quickly find old myths of bloated memory consumption and fiddly XML configuration debunked. Java is also lucky to have a parallel full-featured stack in the Spring…
I took his comment about "very little activity in integrated solutions" to mean "[in the JavaScript world]" but maybe that's not what he meant. I do think that's pretty true of the JS ecosystem though. There are things like Sails, but most of the "new" stuff that comes out is build systems, tools, small libraries, and view libraries. As to why... it's anyone's guess. My guess is that making a full-stack opinionated f…
> As to why... it's anyone's guess.
I think its because recreating rails in javascript just doesn't make sense in the current ecosystem. Either you are rewriting stuff like express from scratch (and why are you doing that?), or you're building on top of those modules and adding configuration conventions and scripts, in which case, congratulations, you've just written Sails.
When Rails first got started, ruby didn't have anything close to the ecosystem that JS enjoys today, so DHH et al. had to write most of the individual components themselves, with the intention of making them all work together.
So in my view, its similar to how Humans and Gorillas evolved from a common ancestor, but you won't see Gorillas becoming Human anytime soon.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#24Rails has become so much more enjoyable since all the hipsters left for node.js. [What makes Rails a framwork worth learning in 2017]
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#25Each user today commands a personal fleet of many devices. "You get to use Ruby" is a weak justification for a monolithic architecture.
Perhaps, but what about this:
1. Easy to deploy
2. Integration tests are a breeze
3. Debugging is a breeze
We use a distributed architecture in clojure and python where I work, but it has its own downsides, and for a lot of people monoliths are a much better solution.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#26I admire the way DHH writes .. confident and persuasive. However, I'd just like to point out that in the same span of time JavaEE has undergone significant simplification (omakase API standards, anyone ;)) and if you check out the work of Adam Bien, you'll quickly find old myths of bloated memory consumption and fiddly XML configuration debunked. Java is also lucky to have a parallel full-featured stack in the Spring…
The complexity level of JavaEE and Spring is still enormous, even if you don't need fiddly XML configuration.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#27The only thing I'd really take much issue with is the "provides great defaults" statement made in passing. There are several things that are defaulted more to what I'd call "lowest common denominator" than "great." For example, sessions.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#28> formalizing conventions, eliminating valueless choices, and offering a full-stack framework that provides great defaults for anyone who wants to create a complete application Maybe I've drank the kool-aid too much, but I agree with this whole-heartedly. It reminds me of when I want to paint a room. I can go to Home Depot and spend an hour picking out all the tools I need, or I can buy one of those pre-packed toolki…
In the last few months I've built a brand new Node + Express application, and I've built a brand new Rails 5.x one.
ES6 has taken the edge off of some of the more obnoxious parts of JavaScript, but it still has a long way to go to catch up to Ruby, and Express is a cheap imitation of Rails.
It takes me over a day to get an Express application up and running. There's dozens of dependencies to wrangle into place. There's hundreds of lines of code to sketch in even the most basic of applications. So many directories to create, so many new files you have to basically build by hand. There's Gulpfiles to configure. There's a lot of work to integrate Passport. It's a lot of work to get as far as "Hello, world".
Meanwhile rails new and some Gemfile dependencies get you almost all the way there within an hour. Then you're making database migrations and laying in CSS and layouts.
I love both Node and Ruby for different reasons, but the out-of-the-box experience for Express is total garbage. You can't even parse a cookie without installing a module for that.
Node is way easier to create real-time services, like a Socket.io server in JavaScript is way less fuss than Ruby+EventMachine. It absolutely kills it when writing thin JSON APIs, and in terms of performance it's ridiculous. There's nothing preventing Node from having a Rails-like easy start for web applications but the attitude of the community where making decisions for people and having sane defaults is apparently against the rules.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#29So, I have seen rails code and I did not fall in love with the code. Instead what I saw just black magic and all sorts of conventions. Reminded me of perl. You have to invest a lot of time knowing all the magic stuff.
> So, I have seen rails code and I did not fall in love with the code. Instead what I saw just black magic and all sorts of conventions.
Right, so clearly Rails is not for you. No harm no foul.
This is essentially the point of rails, that I as an engineer don't care enough about those details, because I need to get something working quickly. if it gets to a point where it matters (because it actually does, say, when you're trying to scale) you can invest the time to learn how it all works and either improve it or say ... "you know what, I think we should ditch this entire thing"
Simple.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#30This reinforces what I see a lot too - people creating yet another XYZ, but rarely I see someone go and create an integrated solution to streamline development processes or make things easier or clearer. There are a lot of vocal people who make it seem like you should be doing everything in Go or Angular or what have you, but I want nothing to do with either, and do not have problems that those are meant to solve. I…
> There are a lot of vocal people who make it seem like you should be doing everything in Go or Angular or what have you
Can you give examples of the 'lot of vocal people' saying 'you should be doing everything in Go or Angular'? I don't see this. I only hear this kind of black/white sentiment when filtered via junior devs.
Experienced devs I know get there are trade-offs. And I don't see anyone on the React/Angular/Vue teams saying that server-sidey Django/Rails/etc. apps are 'wrong'.