Shopify Developer here (opinions are my own) we are running Ruby on Rails (obviously) and we do well with it. It's fast to develop, fast to deploy, fast to test. I have no complaints with it. I would say my gut says that there are fewer bugs, fewer issues, fewer on call incidences, less downtime, and faster development speed than when I worked in a Java shop with micro-services and serverless and plenty of modern things. Technical culture, discipline, quality of engineers and leadership matter so much more than what your tools are imo.
Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
71–80 of 160 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#72Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#73For people in this thread comparing _Rails_ with _Go_ can you please help me understand something about Go: Is it a language that also has in std/core library web framework like support? Like PHP? I ask as I dont understand why people say drop Rails and learn Go. And I am looking to learn a new language along with Ruby and Elixir. Why is Go compared with Rails and not with Ruby? If Go does not include a default suppo…
The Go standard library has all you need to stand up a basic HTTP service. Which isn't the same as Rails by a long shot, but it does fit in well with what a lot of places are doing these days.
yeah, you'll see this argument a lot.
If someone feels like re-implementing all the wonderful conveniences of rails in Go, more power to them. However, that's a MASSIVE amount of work that you'll be doing _instead_ of actually making the webapp.
Go is great, but it's built in HTTP support isn't even _remotely_ equivalent to the many years of accreted utility in Rails.
To put it another way, it's a false equivalence. No-one should EVER say "learn go" instead of rails. Now, if they said "lean Buffalo" ( https://gobuffalo.io/ a Railsish framework in go) instead of Rails you could have a very reasonable discussion.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#74Recent similar discussion:
3 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30022185
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#75We're still starting new greenfield projects in Rails every week, and I still believe it's the best foundation for SaaS products. It's great for developer speed and efficiency, the ecosystem of gems is amazing, and we've been able to scale every project we've needed to. We're incorporating React and GraphQL more these days for complex components and APIs but they pair nicely with Rails.
I work at a company with a large Ruby monolith and it’s a disaster. If you’re face deep in the Ruby ecosystem then I’m sure it makes sense, but trying to build services alongside it is truly awful. You want a scalable system that’s easy to write and will grow with you? Write basic Go services.
"trying to build services alongside it is truly awful"
That makes no sense. It's very easy to build a REST API in Rails in which case you can connect to that API from services written in other languages. Conversely, you can easily call out to other services' APIs from Rails.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say building a few choice services in particularly performant (lower-level) languages alongside a main Rails monolith is the best organizational pattern for larger applications and enterprise deployments. You get all the benefits of Ruby & Rails for most happy paths, as well as the benefits of "This goes to 11!!!" performance for the critical paths which need that.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rails does not have to be written as a monolith. Typically, junior programmers who are trying to move very fast do that. Most of the places where I have talked to people who have a monolith are looking for ways to split it into services. If you wrote a system in Go as a monolith, it would be hard to trim down, too. Architecture matters MUCH more than the implementation language.
Not sure Go is a very good example here, compiled languages have a huge maintainability advantage in monoliths (at the cost of compile time). Ruby/Rails' culture is a huge contributor to why Rails monoliths are so much more difficult to maintain compared to other dynamic languages. Things in Rubyland just love to be global and manipulate things globally and go out of their way to make that behavior hidden.
"Rails monoliths are so much more difficult to maintain"
I question that assertion. I have plenty of anecdotes which are the exact opposite: a Rails monolith is much easier to maintain compared to similar approaches in other languages.
"manipulate things globally"
Not sure what you mean by that to be quite honest. If you mean monkey-patching, that's generally been frowned upon except at the framework-level in the Ruby community for quite a while now.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#77Rails is like PHP. It’ll probably never die because people just keep propping it up. There are much better options, but some people just like the crap they know
Rails is like PHP — well thanks for that compliment! I'd much rather program in modern PHP than in any of the other obvious competitors to Ruby. From what my friends who use Laravel say, that's actually a pretty awesome (and certainly Rails-inspired) framework if you're a PHP dev.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#78Ruby has been on the downswing for a while, getting squeezed from all sides from the meteoric rise of Python on one side, JS/Typescript on the other, to higher performing static languages on another: https://octoverse.github.com/#top-languages-over-the-years It also has a funky syntax, while not a big deal, doesn't do it any favors in a C --> Javascript world. Django, golang, etc. are free. I don't recommend starting…
I think the server side rendering part of rails has largely become obsolete but the api backend side of rails is still going strong. Some day other things like rust might replace it but I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#79I wouldn't choose RoR as a new tech to pick up in 2022. Think of it like a more stylish PHP - lots of it out there, but mostly not in companies working on things that are compelling, and the market share is on the decline.
Github, Airbnb, Stripe, and Gitlab all use Ruby (on Rails) to a significant extend. Compelling things, if you ask me. Stripe is even developing Sorbet [0], a Ruby type checker. Not that those are reason enough to use it. But I wouldn't call it the wrong decision either. 0 - https://sorbet.org/
They all started the projects from 2009-2013 picking Rails, the most popular web framework at the time: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=ruby-on-rails...
If you were to follow in their footsteps, you'd also be picking the top popularity web framework for your time, which as of now is things like Next.js and Django.
Big recent-era startups:
OpenSea (Django / Next.js)
Notion (Node.js)
ScaleAI (Python, Node.js, Next.js)
Substack (Node.js)
Rippling (Django / Next.js)
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#80For people in this thread comparing _Rails_ with _Go_ can you please help me understand something about Go: Is it a language that also has in std/core library web framework like support? Like PHP? I ask as I dont understand why people say drop Rails and learn Go. And I am looking to learn a new language along with Ruby and Elixir. Why is Go compared with Rails and not with Ruby? If Go does not include a default suppo…
I don't think most are directly comparing them as it might seem on the surface. Simply pointing that, if ruby is past its prime, then rails is as well. We don't know what the end project is for everyone, so choosing a web framework here in the comments is kinda early in the discussion anyway.