Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#51

Post by monadoid » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 7:43 PM UTC

jph wrote: post #44

Yes Rails 8 is great. However, pick what the team knows best. For example at a startup doing AI/ML where everyone already knows Python and we're doing a lot with Pandas and Jupyter, we're choosing to build our website CMS by using Django & HTMX. BTW shoutout to the Loco team, for my favorite new web framework. If you're already working with Rust in general, and your business requires extreme speed and extreme reliabi…

Loco is awesome! Hoping that the openAPI generation comes soon - then I can generate zod schemas from the openAPI doc! It would be really cool to use something like hygen/plop or maybe tera (idk) to automatically generate svelte or react CRUD pages, similar to what loco is already doing for htmx.

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#52

Post by nickserv » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 7:50 PM UTC

I would not. I've used PHP, Python, Go, JS/TS, and Ruby in production with small to medium teams. Teams that I managed on occasion and recruited, to a certain extent.

RoR is great at first but in my experience quickly becomes full of hard to diagnose bugs, its magic metaprogramming seems too tempting for developers to use and leads to all sorts of problems.

There is a lack of good quality, well maintenained 3rd party libraries. No such problem with Python, Node, even PHP to a certain extent.

It's slow, except compared to Python. Ruby 3 is much better but still behind.

If you need to ship decent code fast, I would reach for Django.

If you're doing AI stuff, any Python framework will be best.

If you need to hire a sizeable team quickly, I would reach for Node or PHP.

If you need high performance and high reliability I would use Go.

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#53

Post by jmstfv » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 7:50 PM UTC

Rails is pretty good - built my current business on Rails, building a new one on Rails as well.

In fact, I switched to Rails from Django because the latter was lacking.

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#54

Post by rohan_ » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC

Modern React is a "full-stack" framework - with the current recommended implementation being NextJS.

If you build on NextJS you will get the entire tailwinds of the industry behind you. Having Cursor write a full-stack app that leverages server components alongside client components is a 10x velocity unlock that you won't get if you bifurcate your codebase (as is the rails model)

Typescript is going to be the language of AI engineering, (with Python being the language of ML engineering).

Rails is a fundamentally unserious framework:

1. It lacks LSP (any modern language should support this, think "clicking" a function call to go to it's definition)

2. it lacks type-safety (do you really want to write unit tests to enforce contracts and expectations in your code? or just use the type system?)

3. Object-Oriented-Programming is a failed paradigm for modern web development

4. elite engineers will not want to work for you

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#55

Post by mahmoudimus » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

If you had asked me this question 15 years ago, I would've said never use Rails. I am a diehard python developer, with experience in Java, Go and C++.

I am currently building my next startup with a friend of mine on Ruby and we are using Rails. With cursor/AI-assistance, it's the most productive I have felt in a while. Everything just works. Highly recommend Rails 8+.

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#56

Post by mahmoudimus » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

schappim wrote: post #48

tra3 wrote: post #11

Yes, I would. In fact, I'd use any boring technology [0]. Anything that's been around and battle tested. If I was at a startup trying to solve a business problem, the last thing I'd want to do is bruise my knuckles fighting with my tools. Rails provides an opinionated way to structure your codebase as well as many existing modules that just work. It's not exclusive in this space, but it's a safe bet. You can get any…

Rails (and its ecosystem) is anything but boring with Turbo/Hotwire, StimulusJS, a shift away from queues using Redis to the database w/ Solid Queue, a reexamination of how SQLite can be used as a prod database (when tuned), and a new rich text editor on the way… Some of these are eyebrow raising and certainly not boring!

Shifting to solid queue, backed by your rdbms, is more boring than using redis. Successfully deploying an app without anything but a database server is pretty powerful. Everything just works. I would say that's pretty boring :)

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#57

Post by zeroc8 » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:21 PM UTC

The renaissance is more about server based monoliths. Suddenly everyone and their uncle realizes what a waste of time, money and brainpower those SPAs talking to a gazillion micro services managed by Kubernetes are for many if not most use cases. David HH has done a couple great talks about this and he is right. The concrete technology doesn't really matter and is more of a personal preference.

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#58

Post by RadiozRadioz » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

rohan_ wrote: post #54

Modern React is a "full-stack" framework - with the current recommended implementation being NextJS. If you build on NextJS you will get the entire tailwinds of the industry behind you. Having Cursor write a full-stack app that leverages server components alongside client components is a 10x velocity unlock that you won't get if you bifurcate your codebase (as is the rails model) Typescript is going to be the languag…

> any modern language should support this

It seems that people who use Visual Studio Code expect LSP to exist for every language for some reason, then blame the language itself when it doesn't, as this commenter did. It's strange to me. It isn't that the language doesn't support VSCode, the problem is that VSCode doesn't support the language. VSCode is the bad thing, not the language.

> elite engineers will not want to work for you

Engineers who care more about the specific web technology being used rather than solving the problem don't sound like "elite" engineers.

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#59

Post by robertlagrant » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:31 PM UTC

nickserv wrote: post #52

I would not. I've used PHP, Python, Go, JS/TS, and Ruby in production with small to medium teams. Teams that I managed on occasion and recruited, to a certain extent. RoR is great at first but in my experience quickly becomes full of hard to diagnose bugs, its magic metaprogramming seems too tempting for developers to use and leads to all sorts of problems. There is a lack of good quality, well maintenained 3rd party…

> If you need to hire a sizeable team quickly, I would reach for Node or PHP.

I always wonder about this. Surely the technology you pick influences the size of the team.

Re: Ask HN: Would you still choose Ruby on Rails for a startup in 2025?

#60

Post by robertlagrant » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 8:31 PM UTC

jmstfv wrote: post #53

Rails is pretty good - built my current business on Rails, building a new one on Rails as well. In fact, I switched to Rails from Django because the latter was lacking.

What was it lacking?