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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

#241

Post by Closi »

aitchnyu wrote: post #160
Closi wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this! In some companies the 'simple app' that is described in this post will get some ridiculous quote from central IT/tech ('it will take our team 4 sprints') and then never get signed off. IT will also ban anyone spinning up their own servers due to support issues. No code platforms manage to get around this. Another use case - I work for a 'non-tech' consultancy. Clients typically won't like paying us to spin…

I saw the powers that be sit on requests for access for readonly BI tools on existing DBs. How do the low code vendors get VIP treatment?

In my experience you are right - IT will always deny these requests, so you need to build the solutions in a way that avoids accessing existing DBs.

Usually it’s replacing a spreadsheet, so either the information can be manually keyed in or can be imported from various reports. Sometimes you even get into screen scraping, sometimes scheduled reports that are getting dumped to a drive and getting imported… basically any way that avoids needing to get permission from the IT team.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#242

Post by Tarks »

amichal wrote: post #206
Tarks wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shhhhhhhh. Do you have any idea how much I made in Fintech converting spreadsheets that'd exceeded the TA's ability to hack/keep it all in their head and/or quit? Favourite included a single cell that had, I am not kidding, something like 150+ nested if statements.. and there was a dateTime bug in it somewhere :D A friend did very well positioning himself as a data engineering consultant that could come in and quickl…

Wasn't fintech but was fin something. Several weeks into trying to port a Excel workbook with a zillion tabs, some VBscript from stackoverflow and other nastiness and being unable to replicate the results. I discovered the "consultant" who help them create this insane thing had turned on the "allow circular references"[1] option and choosen a number of iterations that "Seemed to make it work" Yay! for non-determinist…

ha wow, read about a guy having to clean up after some data scientists that'd figured out how to use circular references and an iteration limit to do crazy, hard to replicate stuff, (thankfully) never ran into it myself but I bet that was a 'fun' time for you !

Here's to hoping we both never have to dip back into that world again :D

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#243

Post by jack_riminton »

Gigachad wrote: post #240
jack_riminton wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30,000+ tests and it can't detect breaking changes?

In this case no because the broken code was in another gem (sidekiq) using the redis gem. Our CI does not run the unit tests for every library we import. Only our own.

Do you not have tests for your Jobs?

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#244

Post by GreenWatermelon »

lelanthran wrote: post #229
jeltz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will be well paid but not fun at all. I have done similar work and at least cleaning up after bad human developers is often well paid. But time will tell.

> at least cleaning up after bad human developers is often well paid. I wish! "This was written by Bob, who's a certified genius. Unfortunately Bob left us to go backpacking across Chile. Can you make just this one tiny change for us? ... What do you mean, billing for a full day? Bob used to be able to dive right in and make changes like this in 5m!"

Sigh... This os exactly the curse...

Bad coders leave managers with wrong expectations and saddle us with their smoldering piles of garbage and now we have to convince Mr. Manager why we it's impossible to match Mr. Monkey's pace.

We are literally stuck paying off someone else's debt, and it's soul crushing, because you know Mr. Manager won't understand anything technical, and the true culprit, Mr. Code Monkey is already long gone, and we are the sucker holding the bag, getting blamed for late features and slow delivery.

The life lesson I learned is: don't pickup someone else's code, you'll assume all liability.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#245

Post by Gigachad »

jack_riminton wrote: post #243
Gigachad wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case no because the broken code was in another gem (sidekiq) using the redis gem. Our CI does not run the unit tests for every library we import. Only our own.

Do you not have tests for your Jobs?

Yes, we do. In this case the issue was very much inside some internal logic of sidekiq around managing the jobs, not any of our own code.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#246

Post by deterministic »

You can turn any programming language into a super productive “low code like” development platform by adding the necessary libraries/frameworks.

I personally use a code generator to generate more than 90% of the C++ and Javascript code that a typical biz client/server application needs. Protocols, Database support etc. Using libraries to do what isn’t application dependent.

And when I occasionally (rarely) need a new feature not supported by the code generator or libraries, I simply add it as needed.

I highly recommend building your own code generator/libraries. Yes it takes a bit more time up front, but you get a solution that is tailored and perfectly shaped to your (team) needs. And you don’t end up depending on some open source project that has been abandoned or changed in a direction that you don’t agree with.

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#247

Post by lelanthran »

fulafel wrote: post #194
nicce wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In runtime. Basically you lose most of the benefits.

Before lightly using this argument I recommend using a language that really doesn't have types. The difference between getting your errors at runtime / compile time is much much smaller than the difference between those and not getting errors at all.

> Before lightly using this argument I recommend using a language that really doesn't have types.

I am curious now: which language doesn't have types but has a separate compile-time?

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#248

Post by lelanthran »

cies wrote: post #170
lolinder wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Strongly typed" is not a well defined term—it basically means "I'm personally comfortable with the level of guarantees offered by the language", which is a purely subjective measurement. In context it's obvious that what OP meant is that they wouldn't want to build in a language without statically-checked types. That there are languages that provide even fewer statically-analyzable guarantees than Ruby does not make…

> "Strongly typed" is not a well defined term True. But it has boundaries. Strongly typed cannot be used for langs with implicit nulls. You need to do better than stock C, C++, Java or Go to be able to use the term. Rust, Elm, Haskell, Kotlin and OCaml come to mind.

> True. But it has boundaries. Strongly typed cannot be used for langs with implicit nulls. You need to do better than stock C, C++, Java or Go to be able to use the term.

That's, frankly, an insane boundary.

According to you, all mainstream languages are untyped? Seriously?

Re: Rails is better low code than low code

#249

Post by fulafel »

lelanthran wrote: post #247
fulafel wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before lightly using this argument I recommend using a language that really doesn't have types. The difference between getting your errors at runtime / compile time is much much smaller than the difference between those and not getting errors at all.

> Before lightly using this argument I recommend using a language that really doesn't have types. I am curious now: which language doesn't have types but has a separate compile-time?

I don't know that having separate compile-time is relevant for the experience. But Forth, assembler, B and BCPL.

TCL also seems to have a compiler: https://www.tcl.tk/software/tclpro/compiler.html

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