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Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

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Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#81

Post by 0xADEADBEE »

erokar wrote: post #57
sho wrote: post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

I think Django comes close to Rails with regards to productivity. Granted, Django has slightly more overhead to get started, but Django also includes an admin interface and a built-in auth system, which Rails does not.

I work in a lot of Django shops and my Ruby is nowhere near as good as my Python but I'll pick Rails every time if I'm working on a side project. Why? Because the development velocity when using it is unparalleled. I can have an MVP up orders of magnitude quicker than I can with Django/Flask/Twisted. You're absolutely right on the Admin interface and auth, but auth is a gem install away [1] and Django's admin won't fit my requirements more often than it helps; I can seldom justify exposing it to end users and it's a hideous undertaking to extend it meaningfully (I gather this is one of the reasons it is a bit of a laggard compared with the rest of the framework. We only got mobile support out the box in 2.0 for example [2]).

Other reasons I enjoy Rails:

- Scaffolds allow me to have CRUD support for any model I want with one command (combined with auth, I have Django's admin, more or less)

- JSON views without a third party library (surely this is pretty standard for a web framework in 2018 in most cases?)

Other reasons I don't enjoy Django so much:

- I can't think of an eloquent way to phrase this but Rails values my time. With Django I'm doing menial minutiae like creating a directory for my app's templates before it'll serve a page. Why? I know 'magic' is anathema to the Python community but context switches like this shouldn't be there when I'm trying to get an app up and running at speed

- I feel like it's stewardship is bordering on begrudging: Why are websockets (and JSON for that matter, but I've touched on that) not present in a 'kitchen-sink' web framework? I'm not sure why we're worrying about master/slave DB terminology [3] when there are axiomatically more pressing technical and adoption-related issues at hand.

Django is a fine web framework, and perhaps the best-in-breed for Python, but it feels miles behind where it should be at this point and I'm not really sure why.

[1] - https://github.com/plataformatec/devise

[2] - https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.1/releases/2.0/#mobile-f...

[3] - https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#82

Post by ealhad »

M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #74
lmm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think an all-in-one framework is an advantage? As soon as you want to switch something out you end up fighting the framework and the tutorials. Better to start with dedicated libraries that each do one thing - it's inevitably where you're going to end up. (Not that I'd consider an untyped ecosystem in the first place, especially one as fond of "magic" (e.g. monkeypatching) as rails. I have sympathy for jus…

What makes you think Ruby is untyped?

I think they meant “dynamically typed”.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#83

Post by gamache »

andy_ppp wrote: post #60
misterbowfinger wrote: post #37

The example of why Elixir is less productive makes 0 sense: Doh Phoenix and Elixir are trying to do all the best to help developers be productive, when you are a technology that promises such a huge scale you need to introduce practices that need to be decoupled => bit slower for developers. Good example of this how a “model” writes to database. Module (with schema) need to call a changeset, changeset call repository…

I personally think the deployment story heavily conflicts with container management. I’m going to give edeliver on real hardware a go at some point and things should work very well and be very simple.

Only if you want Erlang clustering or hot upgrades. In the usual army-of-one deployment scenario, Elixir and Erlang work inside a container just fine.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#84

Post by joelbluminator »

i_am_nomad wrote: post #48
amarsahinovic wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Django fits that description.

Came here to say the same thing, and add that with Django, you have access to the amazingly vast landscape of Python libraries. Just being able to spawn Celery jobs is a huge plus.

Couldn't see any advantage over Sidekiq, Resque and friends. Not saying it's bad but just that the Ruby community has got your back for any web development need you might have...when working with Django I didn't get the feeling I am working with superior libraries.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#85

Post by joelbluminator »

lmm wrote: post #68
sho wrote: post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

Why do you think an all-in-one framework is an advantage? As soon as you want to switch something out you end up fighting the framework and the tutorials. Better to start with dedicated libraries that each do one thing - it's inevitably where you're going to end up. (Not that I'd consider an untyped ecosystem in the first place, especially one as fond of "magic" (e.g. monkeypatching) as rails. I have sympathy for jus…

I think the types argument is bullshit but it's just my opinion. Do python or ruby devs really feel they are less productive than java devs because they have no types? What I see happening is languages like java becoming more dynamic (var etc) and languages like ruby/python getting better IDEs (auto completion will continue to improve).

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#86

Post by petepete »

zaarn wrote: post #67
sho wrote: post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

RoR has always been rather impenetrable to me, more-so than some late-stage/terminal Node-based projects. I recently wanted to remove IP logging in a RoR application but I was unable to find the relevant code anywhere, the only hits that grep spat out where the migrations and I couldn't figure out how to rip all that out. In the end a project developer pointed me to the correct file and I had to change a single line…

> I recently wanted to remove IP logging in a RoR application but I was unable to find the relevant code anywhere, the only hits that grep spat out where the migrations and I couldn't figure out how to rip all that out.

Usually you'd just create a custom logger[0] and tell Rails to use it[1]

[0] https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.5.0/libdoc/logger/rdoc/Logger....

[1] https://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html#rails-genera...

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#87

Post by joelbluminator »

Jedi72 wrote: post #43
sho wrote: post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

Elixir/Phoenix is the spiritual successor to Rails. Same philosophy of batteries included, developer productivity focussed etc. But with lots of great new shiny things, for example websockets is built directly into the framework, its not an add-on. Its not a direct upgrade, but if you value Rails definitely check it out

The Elixir community would LIKE it to be a spiritual successor for Rails, but it really isn't. If only because of the learning curve of understanding Elixir. Sorry to disappoint anyone but Phenoix is not going to be the new Rails/Django.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#88

Post by vinceguidry »

0xADEADBEE wrote: post #81
erokar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Django comes close to Rails with regards to productivity. Granted, Django has slightly more overhead to get started, but Django also includes an admin interface and a built-in auth system, which Rails does not.

I work in a lot of Django shops and my Ruby is nowhere near as good as my Python but I'll pick Rails every time if I'm working on a side project. Why? Because the development velocity when using it is unparalleled. I can have an MVP up orders of magnitude quicker than I can with Django/Flask/Twisted. You're absolutely right on the Admin interface and auth, but auth is a gem install away [1] and Django's admin won't f…

The source of Rails ease-of-use appears to flow from Ruby's object model, which I have yet to see a more elegant one outside of the Smalltalk ecosystem. Ruby's semantics just seem to be a natural fit for the web, where visual presentation of information seems to almost demand a truly-flexible set of tools.

You want a smooth progression of tooling that you can approach and slowly clarify ever-finer approaches to over time. The object model is the base of the pyramid, it's the thing you rely on when nothing else solves the problem, you know you can always invent a new kind of object hierarchy by refactoring to BasicObject, obliterating stdlib semantics with a veritable flamethrower. I've never put such a thing into production, because I know there's always less drastic ways to define, mold, shape, and extrude abstractions.

With less semantically-fluid languages, you wind up relying on the same few tricks over and over and over again, because they solve problems, albeit poorly and opaquely. This flows, again, from the underlying approach to typing. Python is dynamically typed, which keeps it from being totally unworkable any time you need to do something special or cross-cutting, which is absolutely a need in the web world, but it's structured enough to where you need to devote library-level amounts of thought into coming up with clean, semantic abstractions that are easily traversed, something Ruby just comes with out of the box.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#89

Post by collyw »

Its kind of ridiculous that in this industry we are expected to jump on new trends every couple of years to stay current, rather than learn how to use the tools that we do have well. Sure we get some benefits, but 90 % of the time it seems we are just chasing fads.

(Yes is my answer to the question).

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#90

Post by IMTDb »

joelbluminator wrote: post #85
lmm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think an all-in-one framework is an advantage? As soon as you want to switch something out you end up fighting the framework and the tutorials. Better to start with dedicated libraries that each do one thing - it's inevitably where you're going to end up. (Not that I'd consider an untyped ecosystem in the first place, especially one as fond of "magic" (e.g. monkeypatching) as rails. I have sympathy for jus…

I think the types argument is bullshit but it's just my opinion. Do python or ruby devs really feel they are less productive than java devs because they have no types? What I see happening is languages like java becoming more dynamic (var etc) and languages like ruby/python getting better IDEs (auto completion will continue to improve).

I don't know about ruby and python but in JS there a significant number of projects that aim at adding a type system on top of the launguage
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