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Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

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Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#241

The article is good but it completely ignores the rise of Python, which is the main thing challenging Ruby in 2018. Elixir doesn't really compete with Ruby. It may be technically superior, but will never supplant Ruby because it's just not very accessible, and the timing was bad. So it attracts different sorts of people. Same with Clojure, although they really, really tried. Javascript is the opposite; it gained and…

Is Python challenging Ruby? It's mainly rising thanks to AI and Data Science but I'm not sure Django or Flask are on the rise to defeat Ruby.

(Said as someone who uses Django and is about to "Show HN" a django project in ~2 days)

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You shouldn't jump from one language to another every few months, but you should keep a close eye on what other languages are doing and ask yourself if switching would improve the code you write. Shouldn't that last sentence be "... if switching would improve the end product or service you are delivering." The focus should be on what people are paying you for. Better code doesn't always mean a better product, or b…

The two are equivalent in most cases. There's a relatively small set of problems where the choice of programming languages will have an effect on the product that doesn't come down to the code being more understandable and more amenable to change. Pretty much speed is the only concern for the vast majority of web applications, it isn't really that big a concern for most web applications, and even then it's less about…

> The two are equivalent in most cases.

Yes and no. The most elegant technology solution in the world does mean squat if it doesn't solve the problem the client / user needs solved.

Technology and solution are not the same thing.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#243
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless the popularity of Rails, Python, PHP, and Javascript was all just collective insanity, dynamic languages do offer benefits in some circumstances over languages with stronger type guarantees. with strongly typed languages it's harder to perform exploratory coding. This drives a kind of backpressure on the design stage of development where it becomes more prudent to design your classes and interfaces before yo…

> with strongly typed languages [...] it becomes more prudent to design your classes and interfaces before you start coding, because changing interfaces part way through development is a much larger undertaking Quite the opposite. With strongly typed languages, it becomes safer to make changes, because the compiler will catch mistakes. On top of that, with mature strongly typed languages, there is tooling which takes…

It's safer to make changes, but you can't rapidly mess around with different structures without having to perform housekeeping on your types. This primarily applies to OO code, which is primarily where I draw my experience from - I find FP code is easier to refactor even with strong types because it doesn't enforce as rigid a structure.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript, Ruby, and Elixir are emphatically not interchangeable. Elixir is compiled, the other two are interpreted. JS is supported natively by all browsers and is at its core an event-driven functional language, the other two are not. Ruby is probably the comfiest OOP language out there, and certainly the one with the best standard library. These are not the same languages.

> Ruby is probably the comfiest OOP language out there, and certainly the one with the best standard library. What does Ruby's standard library have that makes it superior to Python's?

I've found it easier to work with strings in Ruby than in python. Not sure if it's "better."

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#245
"A chainsaw is an amazing tool, but you would not use it for all your home projects"

Alot of divides and conflicting ideas in coding languages, framework, and even development processes agile vs test driven. But to build a castle in the sky, you cannot rely on one tool in order to build the whole thing. Use whats best for that case and use another tool for another case.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you think an all-in-one framework is an advantage? Because it has allowed the community to develop a whole lot of well-integrated, batteries-included libraries that span the from the model layer to the frontend.

I hate to break it to you, but Rails doesn’t span the frontend. Hell, the frontend isn’t even written in the same language.

Of course it does. Not in SPA-javascript, but there's a ton of support for erb views:

https://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_view_overview.html

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You shouldn't jump from one language to another every few months, but you should keep a close eye on what other languages are doing and ask yourself if switching would improve the code you write. Shouldn't that last sentence be "... if switching would improve the end product or service you are delivering." The focus should be on what people are paying you for. Better code doesn't always mean a better product, or b…

The two are equivalent in most cases. There's a relatively small set of problems where the choice of programming languages will have an effect on the product that doesn't come down to the code being more understandable and more amenable to change. Pretty much speed is the only concern for the vast majority of web applications, it isn't really that big a concern for most web applications, and even then it's less about…

I think ideally they are the same, but doing a re-write isn't cost free - opportunity cost as you're not doing feature customers care about, new bugs being created, old bugs re-appearing etc etc.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#249
post #233

Apologies for the length here, but it seems like programming language and stack philosophy discussions simply require obscene amounts of length to produce fully-rational arguments. Trying to cut back invariably forces you to end the journey to philosophical truth with subjectively-felt emotion. Would appreciate feedback on what could be removed without compromising legibility. Programmers generally overvalue the util…

I find sequelize really cumbersome and syntactically ugly. I would recommend typeorm or maybe loopback (haven't tried loopback though)

If I had been consulted during the architecture phase, I'm fairly sure I would have found those alternatives and recommended one. I was not consulted, so we're stuck with the architecture we have, unless I want to go to the effort of changing the architecture.

Starting to really loathe the resource-augmentation biz model.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#250
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious why someone would pick rails over php in 2018. Existing pool of developers perhaps.. Any other reason?

Because even in 2018 PHP is still PHP?

What does PHP mean to you? What are your personal views?

From a language perspective it's stable, fast, easy to deploy. Why wouldn't you choose to use it? For most it's not a difficult language to learn and start using.

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