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Being "yesterday's software" is a necessary step. It's the final part of the Gartner hype cycle: maturity. https://speakerdeck.com/tehviking/surviving-the-fram

by calcsam 10y ago

Being "yesterday's software" is a necessary step. It's the final part of the Gartner hype cycle: maturity. https://speakerdeck.com/tehviking/surviving-the-framework-hype-cycle https://speakerdeck.com/tehviking/surviving-the-framework-hy...

mooreds 10y ago
Thank you, that was a wonderful slide deck.
- dopamean 10y ago
  Brandon is a really awesome guy. His talks are always funny and informative.
  - brhays 10y ago
    I don't often visit Hacker News, but when I do, it's to receive compliments. But srsly, thank you, that's very kind to say.
astrodust 10y ago
Nails it. There's nothing shameful in using a "boring, not cool" platform to get work done. The pioneer lifestyle is full of risks. Sometimes you want that excitement, other times you have different priorities.
- maaku 10y ago
  Sometimes you want to read the article.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    I did. It was full of shit. These are the ramblings of someone who's never worked with a mature framework where, as always, there will be lots of legacy stuff laying around just begging to be fixed. But no, fixing stuff is hard. Let's write bitchy blog posts and blame everyone else.
tra3 10y ago
Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MojR1XUEc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MojR1XUEc0 As an aside, how do people consume slide decks? It doesn't seem as interesting without the associated lecture...
- brhays 10y ago
  Thanks for posting this! There's a more recent recording with a bunch of updates here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zc4DSTRGeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zc4DSTRGeM
- mcknz 10y ago
  Decks are only consumable if they have: 1. extensive speaker notes included as an addendum 2. all of the content on the slides (which usually makes for a bad presentation) Some presenters will have 2 versions of their decks -- one minimal version for the presentation, and one extended or enhanced version for later reference.
  - brhays 10y ago
    I've been pestering the SpeakerDeck folks to allow me to paste in my notes, even slide by slide. I have extensive notes but it makes for an ugly export. It'd be awesome if I could tag it as metadata somehow.
geebee 10y ago
Yep! Nothing wrong with yesterday's technology if you're solving yesterday's problems! I don't mean that in a sarcastic or glib way, most of your problems really are yesterday's problems. Or even yesteryear's problems…. now that I think of it, when I depart from rails in a rails project (which is common), it's usually to use raw sql, unix, various networking protocols, or other programming languages that predate rails and ruby. There was a good book out recently from pragmatic bookshelf called "rails angular postgres and bootstrap". Not saying you should necessarily use this stack (I don't), but the idea that you don't need to do everything in rails to use rails is worth listening to. Generally, you're going to want to go back in time, to use tools that were designed for even older problems. For instance, why reinvent sql in a new language? If it's convenient to use active record and there's no performance hit, ok, use it, but don't go into contortions to avoid sql. On a similar note, for those parts of a project where you really should go forward in time and start using tools that haven't withstood the test of time, by all means, go for it. But you aren't obligated to write the other 95% of the project in some new framework.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  ORMs get a lot of undeserved flak for being considered "training wheels for SQL" but they can save you from writing an awful lot of boilerplate code.
  - mgkimsal 10y ago
    And... a lot of awful boilerplate code too. Not to put too fine a point on it, but much of what I see people write in the effort to avoid using an ORM is insanely poor, but they saved 2ms off of a report query that's run 3x per day. Nevermind that I can delete your entire database by modifying URL structure - ORMs are inefficient!
  - geebee 10y ago
    Activereord certainly saves me a lot of time. I think the reason orms get a lot of flak is that people see them usedin wildly inefficient ways that could have been solved with a simple join or other basic sql operation. Or alternatively people to to comical levels of twister to stay within the framework and create a parallel implementation of Sal. But yeah if you use them judiciously they can remove some drudgery.
mtkd 10y ago
Welcome perspective After 30+ years of coding, my first encounter with Rails, a summer morning I received a ripped draft of a very early book on it remains one of the seminal moments of my career - so many elegant solutions to so many issues I'd grappled with since the mid-90s As with any tool it's got some quirks and areas I could criticise - but it's got a place in my toolkit and will have for some time
namuol 10y ago
The criticisms made of Rails in the article have nothing to do with its waning hipness. Rails falls into the trap of mistaking "easy" for "simple".
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I feel like the comment mistook "yesterday's software" for "boring software", which is usually considered a compliment. As you say, the actual article is about how Rails has all of yesterday's flaws, which is pretty much the opposite of "reliable and boring".

by calcsam 10y ago

mooreds 10y ago

Thank you, that was a wonderful slide deck.

dopamean 10y ago
Brandon is a really awesome guy. His talks are always funny and informative.
- brhays 10y ago
  I don't often visit Hacker News, but when I do, it's to receive compliments. But srsly, thank you, that's very kind to say.

astrodust 10y ago

Nails it. There's nothing shameful in using a "boring, not cool" platform to get work done. The pioneer lifestyle is full of risks. Sometimes you want that excitement, other times you have different priorities.

maaku 10y ago
Sometimes you want to read the article.
- astrodust 10y ago
  I did. It was full of shit. These are the ramblings of someone who's never worked with a mature framework where, as always, there will be lots of legacy stuff laying around just begging to be fixed. But no, fixing stuff is hard. Let's write bitchy blog posts and blame everyone else.

tra3 10y ago

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MojR1XUEc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MojR1XUEc0 As an aside, how do people consume slide decks? It doesn't seem as interesting without the associated lecture...

brhays 10y ago
Thanks for posting this! There's a more recent recording with a bunch of updates here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zc4DSTRGeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zc4DSTRGeM
mcknz 10y ago
Decks are only consumable if they have: 1. extensive speaker notes included as an addendum 2. all of the content on the slides (which usually makes for a bad presentation) Some presenters will have 2 versions of their decks -- one minimal version for the presentation, and one extended or enhanced version for later reference.
- brhays 10y ago
  I've been pestering the SpeakerDeck folks to allow me to paste in my notes, even slide by slide. I have extensive notes but it makes for an ugly export. It'd be awesome if I could tag it as metadata somehow.

geebee 10y ago

Yep! Nothing wrong with yesterday's technology if you're solving yesterday's problems! I don't mean that in a sarcastic or glib way, most of your problems really are yesterday's problems. Or even yesteryear's problems…. now that I think of it, when I depart from rails in a rails project (which is common), it's usually to use raw sql, unix, various networking protocols, or other programming languages that predate rails and ruby. There was a good book out recently from pragmatic bookshelf called "rails angular postgres and bootstrap". Not saying you should necessarily use this stack (I don't), but the idea that you don't need to do everything in rails to use rails is worth listening to. Generally, you're going to want to go back in time, to use tools that were designed for even older problems. For instance, why reinvent sql in a new language? If it's convenient to use active record and there's no performance hit, ok, use it, but don't go into contortions to avoid sql. On a similar note, for those parts of a project where you really should go forward in time and start using tools that haven't withstood the test of time, by all means, go for it. But you aren't obligated to write the other 95% of the project in some new framework.

crdoconnor 10y ago
ORMs get a lot of undeserved flak for being considered "training wheels for SQL" but they can save you from writing an awful lot of boilerplate code.
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  And... a lot of awful boilerplate code too. Not to put too fine a point on it, but much of what I see people write in the effort to avoid using an ORM is insanely poor, but they saved 2ms off of a report query that's run 3x per day. Nevermind that I can delete your entire database by modifying URL structure - ORMs are inefficient!
- geebee 10y ago
  Activereord certainly saves me a lot of time. I think the reason orms get a lot of flak is that people see them usedin wildly inefficient ways that could have been solved with a simple join or other basic sql operation. Or alternatively people to to comical levels of twister to stay within the framework and create a parallel implementation of Sal. But yeah if you use them judiciously they can remove some drudgery.

mtkd 10y ago

Welcome perspective After 30+ years of coding, my first encounter with Rails, a summer morning I received a ripped draft of a very early book on it remains one of the seminal moments of my career - so many elegant solutions to so many issues I'd grappled with since the mid-90s As with any tool it's got some quirks and areas I could criticise - but it's got a place in my toolkit and will have for some time

namuol 10y ago

The criticisms made of Rails in the article have nothing to do with its waning hipness. Rails falls into the trap of mistaking "easy" for "simple".

Bartweiss 10y ago
I feel like the comment mistook "yesterday's software" for "boring software", which is usually considered a compliment. As you say, the actual article is about how Rails has all of yesterday's flaws, which is pretty much the opposite of "reliable and boring".