Ember.js attempts to do what the front-end what Rails has done for server-side application development. Worth a look, if you're trying to choose between React / Angular / something else.
DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
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Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#32So, 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.
What's wrong with conventions? It seems to me that code conventions would make code more maintainable.
newsat13 wasn't complaining about using conventions. newsat13 was complaining about how Rails uses black magic with conventions.
I can't speak to Rails, but I've worked in other codebases that used reflection to dynamically attach different pieces of code together. It was hard to trace code because I couldn't do a search for the value being generated nor could I use the static analysis to find the value. I had to manually trace through the whole stack to find the bit of reflection that was generating a value.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#33Rails, as any backend system such as Drupal or Symfony, is inevitably a dead end technology. The web is increasingly moving frontend and the system of 2018 onwards will simply be the M in MVC. Note, I'm not saying Rails is not worth learning. I'm just saying it's now the Cobol of web technology.
If I read your comment correctly, I believe you are suggesting that backends will provide APIs, which would leave us with the MC in MVC, the controller is still needed to map data structures to API endpoints. My question to you is this: why do you believe that? I think we have all witnessed a growth in popularity in front-end MVC frameworks, but are they the correct solution to all problems?
> the controller is still needed to map data structures to API endpoints.
I mean, kind of. You don't really need much controller logic most of the time anymore. Last Rails backend I wrote probably involved personally writing a few lines of code here and there. Generally, I'm just pushing a JSON object back and forth. Auth and emails can just be 3rd party. The vast majority of controller type behavior ends up client side at this point. Partly, because its way simpler to scale with you push as much processing to the client as you can. Also, look at something like Firebase or Hoodie as examples of simple stores that require no backend logic.
Its not that Rails and Symfony are useless, I use them all the time, its just that they are kind of dated concepts. Heck even Wordpress solves a specific problem on the backend enough to be useful sometimes. That said Drupal at this point is such a dated concept(superseded by things like Rails and Symfony many years ago) that is should no longer be used.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#34What does Ruby have to do with immutability
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#35DHH also answers a few other questions about Ruby and Rails in the same Q&A
https://www.quora.com/session/David-Heinemeier-Hansson/1?sri...
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#36This 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/…
At least once a week I read comments or a submission about how X should be written in Rust. That's a pretty common occurrence here; if you stay long enough it'll be another language.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#37> 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…
> It takes me over a day to get an Express application up and running.
I feel so much better after seeing this sentiment here. I've tried to dip my toe into the node.js world repeatedly only to feel like I'm trudging through setup for hours.
Of course I may have incorrect memories of how difficult/easy it was to set up my first rails app however long ago.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#38Maybe Rails has changed from when I last used it five years ago, but I dealt with many of the issues DHH makes against other technology.
> That people spent hours, if not days, just setting up the skeletons. The basic build configurations.
I spent hours everyday getting the asset pipeline to work, or it would break again, meaning I would have to fix it again.
> The vast majority of activity today is for yet another option on the a la carte menu.
Every week the developers want to switch out some module for another module within Rails because it was the hot new thing.
Maybe I worked on a bad project. Maybe I didn't get it. Maybe it was a growing pain that has passed. Rails was a pain in the ass to get to work. The ORM was cool, but did it save me time or mistakes from writing SQL - no.
I would love other people's opinions who have stuck with Rails.
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#39What does Ruby have to do with immutability
".freeze" :) it's all runtime baby, love it (at least accept it), or move on
Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?
#40I 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 thought that was a strange claim, too (though if it was just about js, that would make more sense), especially given Elixir /Phoenix - which seems like an up-and-coming framework very much in the Rails mold.