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Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

gilesbowkett.blogspot.in

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Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#91

Post by f4stjack »

This is not a fashion show, or "my framework is leaner and executes faster than yours" competition. "Rails is old and busted; Node.js is the new hotness." Seriously? is this the mentality we should adhere to? What happened to the problem solving, or building stuff? Old is bad, eh? If that is our credo we should quit javascript altogether because it is oldness itself!

Please don't get me wrong but I see a problem here. The attitude is quite problematic. You choose a programming language based on what do you want to achieve, and how that language helps you to achieve, not on buzzwords. If I want to build a weblog application, I won't try to learn c++ for example. Not because "it is old and bloaty and requires a peripheral knowledge", it won't help me to solve my problem. And I wonder, what kind of programming language does not require peripheral knowledge?

I can go on and on about how hard is it to do such a shift in a corporate environment and maturity of a codebase is good, and code is not a thing that rusts but I think I made my point.

tl;dr: you choose programming languages based on what you want to do and how that language makes your job easier; not because it is new or old or bloaty or "lean".

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#92

Post by jpdoctor »

FTA > I literally need to type bundle exec every single time I want to scratch my balls. I don't like having to type bundle exec every single time I scratch my balls. I named the task balls, so I can type rake balls, because it rakes my balls, and Bundler pisses all over my tidy syntax, but am I going to complain? Am I going to point out that asking me to type bundle exec every time I want to scratch my own balls shows incredible contempt for me as a user

Really? This what passes for A vs B discussion at the top of HN?

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#93

Post by judofyr »

railsjedi wrote: post #10
Fluxx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are things harder with these technologies?

Having to learn the ins and out of bundler `bundle exec, update, --without :darwin`.. just to use a package handler. I had growl_notify installed, and now we've forced our team to be mac only because we got tired of dealing with linux issues. Ruby Debug is impossible to get working in 1.9.3. The maintainer of ruby-debug has gone AWOL so we're forced to deal with solutions like this http://blog.wyeworks.com/2011/11/1/…

> Ruby Debug is impossible to get working in 1.9.3.

Ruby 1.9 ships with a debugger:

    require 'debug'
Besides, I've often find Pry way more useful: https://github.com/pry/pry

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#94

Post by phillmv »

etrain wrote: post #76
nathan_f77 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience with Ruby development (2 years), I have never, ever experienced a single issue caused by duck typing. Static typing is great for performance, but it has nothing to do with being able to maintain a project.

Have you worked with more than 5 developers on a rails project? I ask because all the problems I've had with dick typing appear around interfaces between code from 2 programmers, and 5 seems to be the threshold where communication starts to break down.

What kind of problems do you genuinely have with a dynamic language/duck typing?

Like, that you've actually experienced and said "You know, I'm not saying this just because I'm not used to it. This bit right here is a design flaw".

This is such a tired and boring argument by this point, but I'm willing to entertain it because duck typing is at the bottom of my list of worries.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#96

Post by phillmv »

functionform wrote: post #63
bad_user wrote: post #15

Rails has always been bloated. That's what you get from frameworks that come with automation for common tasks. However, let me provide a counter-point ... I think that Rails 3 is finally a good framework that I want to use. Blogs written in 5 minutes (which you can still do in Rails 3) have never impressed me. What impresses me is code-reuse, modularity and readability. Which is why I preferred Django instead of Rail…

After everyone saw how it easy it was to write your own blog in Rails, everyone ... used Wordpress anyway. The Rails use case was always truly limited. I still don't know any application that achieved maturity and stayed coded in Rails. For a while that was Twitter, but then they started moving stuff over the jvm. Node will probably end up in a similar way, because at the end of the day no one wants to manage thousan…

1) Meh on node. I don't really see the advantage of using node aside from specific and well defined performance requirements. It's ironic to be saying this coming from Rails, but it seems like Node's toolset is somewhat immature. Is there a good way to use plugins in Node? There must be. Anyhow, server side? Meh.

2) That said, Javascript isn't going away. We will all be managing thousands of lines of Javascript because… that's where applications are going - client side. Good luck convincing all the browser vendors to swap.

Anyhow, I know you're just trolling but you have to up your troll game - 98% of apps fall in between "toy demo" and "twitter".

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#97

Post by jeswin »

karterk wrote: post #8

As far as Node goes, there is still no "holy grail" framework that can help one build a web app seamlessly across both client and server side. The momentum will definitely shift heavily towards Node if and when that happens. Right now, there is still a lot of manual glue work needed to set-up a client side MVC app using Node + Backbone while also taking care of graceful degradation etc.

Should we really worry about graceful degradation anymore? Personally, I don't waste much time on this like I did years back.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#98

Post by enko »

I guess the first of many things I don't understand about this post is that Archaeopteryx is not built in Rails, has nothing to do with Rails, nor is it a web site nor has anything to do with http nor even requires active_support or similar.

I know some people think Rails is going in the wrong direction - I disagree, but it's a topic on which reasonable minds can differ. This post may have something valuable to say on that subject, or not. Regardless, it's got nothing to do with the author's music library and I suspect the only reason Rails was mentioned at all was to stir controversy and bring attention to an otherwise unrelated announcement.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#99

Post by secoif »

rohitarondekar wrote: post #70
subwindow wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there's no third option- something to manage dependencies that's not bundler. We all want and need dependency management, but bundler should not be the One True Solution.

Write your own? I'm sorry but if Bundler doesn't solve your problem (or introduces other problems) either try and fix those issues OR write your own dependency management lib.

And discussions like this, raising awareness and exchanging ideas, are a part of getting the problem fixed.

Re: Went Off The Rails: Why I'm Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript

#100

Post by politician »

I can't say much about Rails, but I will say that after doing a CoffeeScript, Backbone, and require.js with clientside compilation project -- debugging is pain and tears. Even though Chrome supports source maps, CoffeeScript doesn't, and the error messages raised by require.js are of the "you fucking peon" variety referred to in the article.

I like CoffeeScript and AMD, but they aren't ready to be in the same room together. Hopefully, jrburke's almond will let me build a serverside compilation strategy that isn't awful to debug.

On the other hand, Backbone kicks ass, and I wrote a DOM-twiddling Knockout.js inspired data binder called _outback.js_ to make it better. It's up on github (politician/outback) if anyone's interested.

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