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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

#21

Post by bloomingkales »

Neywiny wrote: post #8

It would be nice to get a brief definition of "low code." Otherwise great article. I've found myself using "low code" frameworks when they setup my environment for me and can generate the code files. Key example was a Minecraft mod maker. Within a minute I was fed up with the scratch style programming, but it had all the Java build stuff ready for me to just edit the files myself. No setting up gradle or anything.

“Low code” means you do not have to go beyond the tool to solve problems. In fact, there should be entire problems you cannot even create with low code tools. Programming could mean an endless rabbit hole through several technologies, same with designing (you are concocting designs that may use several different technologies).

If the tool lets you make a circle button and change text in it, then that’s all you have to worry about.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#22

Post by lordofgibbons »

namaria wrote: post #3

The low code space has been well explored. Excel is the flagship product in that space. You tell me if you want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of spreadsheets.

That's AN example, idk if I'd call it the flagship product. Another example is: https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini/ which uses node based programming with small amounts of code for edge cases. It's used in a lot of movies very successfully.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#23

Post by jameslk »

bravura wrote: post #16
jameslk wrote: post #11

Both low code and Rails have become a lot less relevant since LLM assisted coding became the norm. Low code became less relevant because 1. LLMs solved many of the problems low code solves with better control over the output, and 2. you can’t use many low code platforms as an output from LLMs or other types of models (yet). Rails became less relevant because Ruby is dynamically typed, and this poses a challenge for L…

What are the best static languages + frameworks for shipping CRUD web apps?

This is going to be largely dependent on your needs, but a factor I would consider if you're using LLMs for coding is which models have been trained the most on which languages. The more a model has been trained on a particular language, the less it will hallucinate

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#24

Post by ajayvk »

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.

This is what I am trying to solve for with https://github.com/claceio/clace.

Allow internal tools to be built with regular frameworks, while making it easy to add gitops, SSO, secrets management etc which are required for internal tools.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#25

Post by dullcrisp »

jameslk wrote: post #11

Both low code and Rails have become a lot less relevant since LLM assisted coding became the norm. Low code became less relevant because 1. LLMs solved many of the problems low code solves with better control over the output, and 2. you can’t use many low code platforms as an output from LLMs or other types of models (yet). Rails became less relevant because Ruby is dynamically typed, and this poses a challenge for L…

The post isn’t about LLMs. Why not say LLMs have become less relevant since the advent of Ruby on Rails? It seems to me they’d be worse than both options presented in the post.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#26

Post by game_the0ry »

I am not a rails dev but have looked into it for some side projects that I am considering.

IMO, I think it hits an excellent balance between rolling-your-own framework and no-framework-low-code. Rails itself handles so much configuration and wiring up so you that most of the code you do have to write is business logic.

Lambda functions and firebase are convenient and compelling but come with their own tradeoffs that are not as well-tested in the real world compared to rails.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#27

Post by cpursley »

jameslk wrote: post #11

Both low code and Rails have become a lot less relevant since LLM assisted coding became the norm. Low code became less relevant because 1. LLMs solved many of the problems low code solves with better control over the output, and 2. you can’t use many low code platforms as an output from LLMs or other types of models (yet). Rails became less relevant because Ruby is dynamically typed, and this poses a challenge for L…

As much as I love Ruby and Rails (and Elixir even more so), the IDE type checking of Typescript combined with LLMs is insanely productive. So I tend to agree, despite very much disliking node/JS and it's ecosystem. I've never been so productive in terms of getting ideas out of my head into functional products (ideate with Claude then start with bolt and move to Cursor after tapping that out).

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#28

Post by jiggawatts »

Neywiny wrote: post #8

It would be nice to get a brief definition of "low code." Otherwise great article. I've found myself using "low code" frameworks when they setup my environment for me and can generate the code files. Key example was a Minecraft mod maker. Within a minute I was fed up with the scratch style programming, but it had all the Java build stuff ready for me to just edit the files myself. No setting up gradle or anything.

Generally these are the drag & drop visual editors like Microsoft Power Apps and the like.

Like the article said, my experience is that they're Great!™ until they're not, at which point you're painted into a corner.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#29

Post by BowBun »

IshKebab wrote: post #18
namaria wrote: post #3

The low code space has been well explored. Excel is the flagship product in that space. You tell me if you want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of spreadsheets.

I don't particularly want to be involved with a long lived and non trivial collection of Ruby code either, if my experience of the Gitlab codebase is anything to go by. I agree with the author's point, if you replace Ruby with something less awful (Deno, Go, etc.)

This feels like the exception that proves the rule. Gitlab has one of the largest Rails codebases on earth. It's also been built by a decentralized remote engineering org from the start. I think that explains a lot.

Compare that to my personal experiences and that of my colleagues who work heavily with Rails: We show up to a new job at any level of seniority, spend a week or two learning the codebase, and immediately have a firm grasp of all the major components of the application. And I want to stress _firm_ grasp, since everything from the model structure to the ORM to where you can expect to find tests is standard.

Obviously no framework or convention will hold perfectly in the extremes

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#30

Post by chamomeal »

jameslk wrote: post #11

Both low code and Rails have become a lot less relevant since LLM assisted coding became the norm. Low code became less relevant because 1. LLMs solved many of the problems low code solves with better control over the output, and 2. you can’t use many low code platforms as an output from LLMs or other types of models (yet). Rails became less relevant because Ruby is dynamically typed, and this poses a challenge for L…

I don’t rely on LLMs as much as I did when copilot came out, but I 100% agree regarding static types: they make it so much easier to tell when the LLM is spewing nonsense. I probably wouldn’t use one at all with a dynamically typed language.
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