Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

quora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 135 posts

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#61

Post by patsplat »

pyrophane wrote: post #9
0xsnowcrash wrote: post #6

Rails, 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?

Front-end MVC frameworks are deployed and run client-side. Their emergence is a supporting point to the argument that the view is migrating away from the web server and onto the client device(s).

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#62

Post by dgfgfdagasdfgfa »

vinhboy wrote: post #16

> 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…

Sure, it's just the people who have to work with the demo that will want to murder you.

Lots of frameworks get you into tech debt quickly. This isn't good. What does it do to get you OUT of tech debt?

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#63

Post by patsplat »

jrs95 wrote: post #19
patsplat wrote: post #17

Each user today commands a personal fleet of many devices. "You get to use Ruby" is a weak justification for a monolithic architecture.

He considers the monolithic architecture to be an advantage: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-majestic-monolith-29166d02222...

If he really believed that, then the thing todo would be to re-write rails to run on top of node. Then he'd have a runtime that spanned nearly every possible use case and device.

Sticking with Ruby betrays that aesthetics are really the core premise of Rails, rather than aspirations of being the one framework to link all run times and in the darkness bind them.

Frankly, node needs such a framework.

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#64

Post by ethbro »

allover wrote: post #41
johnbellone wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen a lot of Rust posts on HN lately, but none saying you must ditch mature frameworks like Rails for Rust equivalents (there aren't any yet, and they know that, for one). Where's the evidence for this claim DHH/Rails is the only rational force in a sea of extremists? (Of course the dull reality with real apps is "it's complicated" and most devs are busy grappling with that).

> Rails for Rust equivalents (there aren't any yet, and they know that, for one)

... Can we please call it Rusty Rails?

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#65

Post by jen729w »

newsat13 wrote: post #7

So, 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.

As someone who is just learning Rails [1], I can definitely empathise with the "black magic" comment.

Some of the stuff it does is pretty much voodoo to me at this point. But - it's voodoo that makes me think - even say out loud to myself, sometimes - "wow". I can see how it's amazing that it does what it does with so little code. I can see how this is an enormous benefit to getting a project up and running. I can see how it'll potentially save me hours and hours of configuration.

That's a great benefit, but it comes at the cost of understanding. What exactly is that line of voodoo doing? I dunno. How do I troubleshoot it if it doesn't work? I dunno. Like, I have no idea.

[1]: As the first real "language" I'm trying to actually properly learn, so take my comments in that context. I am not already an experienced coder. I want to be able to knock up little projects, proofs of concept, in a reasonable amount of time. Rails, to me, seems like the framework that will allow me to do that. We'll see.

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#66

Post by ethbro »

dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #57
meesterdude wrote: post #4

This 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…

I mean it sounds rational until you realize that modern rails apps are a perfect example of the complexity you want to avoid.

This. Legacy codebases convinced me that good languages / frameworks are the ones you can do many things in.

But the great ones restrict how you can do those things down to a few patterns (in a way that doesn't actually seem like a restriction).

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#67

Post by throwanem »

Rails showed us all that web development didn't have to be PHP and Apache and constant headaches. Node and Phoenix and the modern paradigm in general wouldn't have come into existence, or achieved the popularity they have, without an act like Rails to follow. That's awesome, and I respect it for that.

But can it truly be said that Rails has a purpose today? Its default performance remains lousy with any kind of load. Its convention-first approach means Rails knowledge doesn't easily generalize, as can be seen in this very comment thread from the experience of those who've approached the Node ecosystem as though it were "Javascript on Rails". The "history? what history?" attitude of its BDFL and his clique makes cause for trepidation out of the prospect of maintaining a Rails app over a significant length of time. And even by comparison with ES5, Ruby is a hot mess.

I get that DHH has to defend it. It's his baby, after all. But it's been a long time indeed since Rails had anything unique to offer beyond an ideology which is, in its own way, every bit as much a straitjacket as RMS' - and Rails' inheritors have innovated in ways that straitjacket makes it very hard at best for Rails to match.

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#68

Post by patsplat »

bobbytherobot wrote: post #38

Maybe 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 o…

Many of DHH's complaints are normal parts of every software project:

- depending on third party packages can be a pain

- switching environments / languages is annoying

The argument that these things disappear with Rails is weak.

The historical argument that a dynamically typed language can handle these issues more gracefully than J2EE is valid but less relevant today.

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#69

Post by dualogy »

mavelikara wrote: post #52
meesterdude wrote: post #4

This 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 It might be hard to believe now, but Rails also went through this stage of vocal supporters advocating for it over alternatives. If you go back and watch the introduction video [1], you have DHH creating a blog in 15 minutes using RoR. I remember being impressed by it and vocally pushing for it whe…

Crikey that takes me back. Almost 12 years ago! I was 23 then and big-time into .NET but caught wind of this and watched it (hooray for student housing with decent net speeds -- sometimes, off-peak!) with an amused smirk as so much other tech stuff that comes and goes. Funny, this kind of stuff wouldn't raise an eyebrow today, other than "15 minutes to create a blog" in a fresh framework install being perceived as suspiciously cumbersome at best! ;) do realize that it was a much needed breath of fresh air back in the day for what was the widespread "LAMP stack" (linux/apache/mysql/php for ye young'uns) ..

Re: DHH answers: What makes Rails a framework worth learning in 2017?

#70

Post by patsplat »

throwanem wrote: post #67

Rails showed us all that web development didn't have to be PHP and Apache and constant headaches. Node and Phoenix and the modern paradigm in general wouldn't have come into existence, or achieved the popularity they have, without an act like Rails to follow. That's awesome, and I respect it for that. But can it truly be said that Rails has a purpose today? Its default performance remains lousy with any kind of load.…

Agreed. Would love to see DHH build an opinionated framework for node rather than waxing poetic about Ruby.
Post reply on HN