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I am thinking about completely stopping reading Hacker News. I enjoy the community a lot but every time I am learning something new I read about how its old and

I am thinking about completely stopping reading Hacker News. I enjoy the community a lot but every time I am learning something new I read about how its old and shitty and will cause hair loss when you try and invest any time in it. It puts the breaks on actually learning with the distraction of going and trying to find that new ambiguous stack that the author is hinting at.

askyourmother 10y ago
If you learn a library, you will always be in the driving seat. If you learn a framework, well, better buckle up, because it is a bumpy ride. Frameworks are like hamburgers at maccy ds - consumption for the masses, no thinking required. Later in life those decisions can be a problem.
- petepete 10y ago
  Given the choice between hand-rearing cattle and growing wheat versus buying a ready-made burger, well, it depends on whether you want to eat slightly less well, sooner or slightly better, later.
- meekins 10y ago
  It's exactly the attitude you describe what gets people into trouble with frameworks. Getting up and running and building things on a huge foundation like Rails is easy but you should also act responsibly and take the extra steps required to understand what's going under the hood. The effort of understanding a set of well defined "small" libraries is less daunting than a whole monolithic framework (probably with tons of bells and whistles you rarely even use) but both approaches (compare for example the style of the Clojure web app community vs Rails) have their benefits. A set of libs can be adapted more easily to specific needs and development of each of the individual dependencies can move fast without worrying about the others. On the other hand Rails changes relatively slowly but each Rails app being just another Rails app with all the pieces where you expect them to be can be considered a big plus in maintenance.
scj 10y ago
Wouldn't you rather be told upfront what a tool's flaws are before you invest years of effort into them? Even if you decide to embrace a tool despite flaws, isn't it best to recognize / minimize them? For example, C is a great tool. But heaven help someone if they ignore its' sharp edges. There is no silver bullet. So the best you can do is find something that suits you, and the task(s) you are trying to accomplish.
- elliotec 10y ago
  I completely agree with you. But when it comes to developing web apps rapidly, Rails is about as close a silver bullet as you can get. If your entire purpose is to ship a product quick, you should be ignoring the "too much magic, too many dependencies" narrative and building something, which Rails is wonderful at.
  - icpmacdo 10y ago
    With Rails 5 just coming out now does it make sense to just start learning there. Is the material like the "Ruby on Rails Tutorial" book that uses 4.2 still worth reading or is it a large change, something like the python 2.7 to 3 where tutorials and reference material are largely dependent on the software version you use.
    - elliotec 10y ago
      There will be some major changes, but not as drastic as the Python version upgrade. I'd think the 4.2 book will be totally fine, and when 5 is out, just look at the changelog and start adding what you need from it.
      - lsiebert 10y ago
        FYI, one of the big changes is in integration tests on controllers... it's not a huge difference, but if you try to copy from the book instead of generating your controller you might have issues. Also only the 5.1 RC is out. If I was learning, I'd build an app with the current stable version of 4, a toy crud app with 100% test coverage, then try to convert that to 5. Then compare that to building 5.0 using it's generators. You are likely to work with legacy code, so learning 4 is not bad. May well do that myself, so I'm catching gotchas like the integration test changes in my toy and not at work on a deadline. But yeah, coding, at least for me, is all about trade offs, and as long as you understand the rails trade offs and mitigations, you are fine.
Jaepa 10y ago
Eh, there will be a large market for Rail & Ruby for a long time. One of the first things to come out of Rust & Golang was a Rails style framework. And honestly when it comes to learning languages ideas are transferable, the only thing that changes is the wrapping around it. Learn what seems interesting and useful, and use the right tool for the right job.
tomc1985 10y ago
Perhaps you might consider completely stopping reading Medium posts. Much of what is wrong with HN is the fact that people here think Medium gives them instant credibility. (To be more specific, I object with how professionally-done Medium posts look, in contrast with their content, which often seem amateurish at best.)
- icpmacdo 10y ago
  That is the other conclusion I came too. The click bate title of it is enough to cause issues though. There is a consensus on this website though that Rails is good enough for ideas I want to get out there so I will stick with learning it, so far it has been fun.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    Rails has a lot of life left in it. Still my favorite platform for gettin shit done
xutopia 10y ago
Rails has a bright future ahead despite what this article states. Consider for a moment that most projects just need to figure out product-market fit before we know where to throw the money to scale. Rails remains to this day the tool I go to for building web applications because it's so well suited for building something quickly. Sure the effort to make it scale is present but I see any scaling effort as big regardless of framework or language.
- askyourmother 10y ago
  Sure now it is Rails 5 - enterprise Rails strikes back! Seriously though, I am looking forward to Rails 8 - with the ActionSecurityHolePipeline.
- davidw 10y ago
  > Rails remains to this day the tool I go to for building web applications because it's so well suited for building something quickly. Sure the effort to make it scale is present but I see any scaling effort as big regardless of framework or language. This is why I continue to use Rails despite being interested in this that and the other new thing. It's very productive in terms of getting something up and running. I mean, heck, Twitter started with Rails, and despite some hiccups, managed to grow. And Twitter is pretty much the poster child for something that has to scale massively. Odds are, you won't have the same problem.
  - marshray 10y ago
    Twitter is the poster child for dumping Ruby. Even if Rails is God's gift to CRUD app prototyping at some point you have to ask if building a tech stack on something that is going to fail hard as soon as you get popular is providing a good service to those who are paying you for the quality workmanship.
    - zdrummond 10y ago
      That was not what the commentator was referring to; > "It's very productive in terms of getting something up and running." Implying that Twitter reached success under Rails, even if it was _not_ the best fit for the problem set. Dumping Rails when you have won the market is a nice luxury to have, one that most people on HN do not have.
zxcvcxz 10y ago
I feel the same. Plus I hate the forced corporate atmosphere. I've noticed anyone with strong philosophical opinions on software are typically shunned in favor of the corporate narrative. I feel like a couple of years ago HN had a pretty diverse culture when it came to OS and software stacks, the past few months it seems EVERYONE is shoving corporate shit down my throat: VSCode, "Bash on Linux", Azure, TypeScript, Windows 10, and don't forget real programmers spend 90% of their time editing decades old MSWord files so they can't possibly go without MS office. If it has a big corporation behind it HN will shove it down your throat, if it's a small open source project HN will circlejerk around it like it's the next big thing, if it's an OSS project that threatens some big corporate project you can bet money that HN will shit all over it.
marssaxman 10y ago
You'll probably be happier with your life if you let go of that, because this cycle has been part of software as long as I've been involved with it, and I expect that it will always be so. For any given technology which manages to take off at all, there's generally at least a ten year span during which some groups of early adopters are calling it "old and busted" and moving on, while other people are just discovering the "new hotness" and piling in. Just because this guy has switched from one group to the other doesn't mean you need to follow him; if the technology is good and meets your needs then hey, take it on, it'll be great. The other thing that happens is... well, most of what this article is talking about has nothing to do with technology in the first place; it's more about the community built around that technology, and the fact that the author no longer feels like that community is going in a direction compatible with his needs. I'm not part of the ruby community at all so maybe he's right and the "roadmap for rails is bleak" - but I'd bet that it's really more that it has developed further but not in a way that suits this author's needs, so he feels disappointed and alienated from the community, and he is observing that he and the rails community are drifting apart and will soon get divorced. This says nothing whatsoever about the compatibility of the current rails community's direction with your direction, and it makes no useful predictions about the future development of the rails technology and its potential compatibility with your needs. It could be that the same forces driving this author away from rails are the ones which have brought it to your attention as something worth learning about and investing in.
gaius 10y ago
There are 2 kinds of languages, those people complain about and those no-one uses -- Stroustrup
Dillybob 10y ago
" learning something new I read about how its old and shitty" Oh, the irony: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8787117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8787117

askyourmother 10y ago

If you learn a library, you will always be in the driving seat. If you learn a framework, well, better buckle up, because it is a bumpy ride. Frameworks are like hamburgers at maccy ds - consumption for the masses, no thinking required. Later in life those decisions can be a problem.

petepete 10y ago
Given the choice between hand-rearing cattle and growing wheat versus buying a ready-made burger, well, it depends on whether you want to eat slightly less well, sooner or slightly better, later.
meekins 10y ago
It's exactly the attitude you describe what gets people into trouble with frameworks. Getting up and running and building things on a huge foundation like Rails is easy but you should also act responsibly and take the extra steps required to understand what's going under the hood. The effort of understanding a set of well defined "small" libraries is less daunting than a whole monolithic framework (probably with tons of bells and whistles you rarely even use) but both approaches (compare for example the style of the Clojure web app community vs Rails) have their benefits. A set of libs can be adapted more easily to specific needs and development of each of the individual dependencies can move fast without worrying about the others. On the other hand Rails changes relatively slowly but each Rails app being just another Rails app with all the pieces where you expect them to be can be considered a big plus in maintenance.

scj 10y ago

Wouldn't you rather be told upfront what a tool's flaws are before you invest years of effort into them? Even if you decide to embrace a tool despite flaws, isn't it best to recognize / minimize them? For example, C is a great tool. But heaven help someone if they ignore its' sharp edges. There is no silver bullet. So the best you can do is find something that suits you, and the task(s) you are trying to accomplish.

elliotec 10y ago
I completely agree with you. But when it comes to developing web apps rapidly, Rails is about as close a silver bullet as you can get. If your entire purpose is to ship a product quick, you should be ignoring the "too much magic, too many dependencies" narrative and building something, which Rails is wonderful at.
- icpmacdo 10y ago
  With Rails 5 just coming out now does it make sense to just start learning there. Is the material like the "Ruby on Rails Tutorial" book that uses 4.2 still worth reading or is it a large change, something like the python 2.7 to 3 where tutorials and reference material are largely dependent on the software version you use.
  - elliotec 10y ago
    There will be some major changes, but not as drastic as the Python version upgrade. I'd think the 4.2 book will be totally fine, and when 5 is out, just look at the changelog and start adding what you need from it.
    - lsiebert 10y ago
      FYI, one of the big changes is in integration tests on controllers... it's not a huge difference, but if you try to copy from the book instead of generating your controller you might have issues. Also only the 5.1 RC is out. If I was learning, I'd build an app with the current stable version of 4, a toy crud app with 100% test coverage, then try to convert that to 5. Then compare that to building 5.0 using it's generators. You are likely to work with legacy code, so learning 4 is not bad. May well do that myself, so I'm catching gotchas like the integration test changes in my toy and not at work on a deadline. But yeah, coding, at least for me, is all about trade offs, and as long as you understand the rails trade offs and mitigations, you are fine.

Jaepa 10y ago

Eh, there will be a large market for Rail & Ruby for a long time. One of the first things to come out of Rust & Golang was a Rails style framework. And honestly when it comes to learning languages ideas are transferable, the only thing that changes is the wrapping around it. Learn what seems interesting and useful, and use the right tool for the right job.

tomc1985 10y ago

Perhaps you might consider completely stopping reading Medium posts. Much of what is wrong with HN is the fact that people here think Medium gives them instant credibility. (To be more specific, I object with how professionally-done Medium posts look, in contrast with their content, which often seem amateurish at best.)

icpmacdo 10y ago
That is the other conclusion I came too. The click bate title of it is enough to cause issues though. There is a consensus on this website though that Rails is good enough for ideas I want to get out there so I will stick with learning it, so far it has been fun.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  Rails has a lot of life left in it. Still my favorite platform for gettin shit done

xutopia 10y ago

Rails has a bright future ahead despite what this article states. Consider for a moment that most projects just need to figure out product-market fit before we know where to throw the money to scale. Rails remains to this day the tool I go to for building web applications because it's so well suited for building something quickly. Sure the effort to make it scale is present but I see any scaling effort as big regardless of framework or language.

askyourmother 10y ago
Sure now it is Rails 5 - enterprise Rails strikes back! Seriously though, I am looking forward to Rails 8 - with the ActionSecurityHolePipeline.
davidw 10y ago
> Rails remains to this day the tool I go to for building web applications because it's so well suited for building something quickly. Sure the effort to make it scale is present but I see any scaling effort as big regardless of framework or language. This is why I continue to use Rails despite being interested in this that and the other new thing. It's very productive in terms of getting something up and running. I mean, heck, Twitter started with Rails, and despite some hiccups, managed to grow. And Twitter is pretty much the poster child for something that has to scale massively. Odds are, you won't have the same problem.
- marshray 10y ago
  Twitter is the poster child for dumping Ruby. Even if Rails is God's gift to CRUD app prototyping at some point you have to ask if building a tech stack on something that is going to fail hard as soon as you get popular is providing a good service to those who are paying you for the quality workmanship.
  - zdrummond 10y ago
    That was not what the commentator was referring to; > "It's very productive in terms of getting something up and running." Implying that Twitter reached success under Rails, even if it was _not_ the best fit for the problem set. Dumping Rails when you have won the market is a nice luxury to have, one that most people on HN do not have.

zxcvcxz 10y ago

I feel the same. Plus I hate the forced corporate atmosphere. I've noticed anyone with strong philosophical opinions on software are typically shunned in favor of the corporate narrative. I feel like a couple of years ago HN had a pretty diverse culture when it came to OS and software stacks, the past few months it seems EVERYONE is shoving corporate shit down my throat: VSCode, "Bash on Linux", Azure, TypeScript, Windows 10, and don't forget real programmers spend 90% of their time editing decades old MSWord files so they can't possibly go without MS office. If it has a big corporation behind it HN will shove it down your throat, if it's a small open source project HN will circlejerk around it like it's the next big thing, if it's an OSS project that threatens some big corporate project you can bet money that HN will shit all over it.

marssaxman 10y ago

You'll probably be happier with your life if you let go of that, because this cycle has been part of software as long as I've been involved with it, and I expect that it will always be so. For any given technology which manages to take off at all, there's generally at least a ten year span during which some groups of early adopters are calling it "old and busted" and moving on, while other people are just discovering the "new hotness" and piling in. Just because this guy has switched from one group to the other doesn't mean you need to follow him; if the technology is good and meets your needs then hey, take it on, it'll be great. The other thing that happens is... well, most of what this article is talking about has nothing to do with technology in the first place; it's more about the community built around that technology, and the fact that the author no longer feels like that community is going in a direction compatible with his needs. I'm not part of the ruby community at all so maybe he's right and the "roadmap for rails is bleak" - but I'd bet that it's really more that it has developed further but not in a way that suits this author's needs, so he feels disappointed and alienated from the community, and he is observing that he and the rails community are drifting apart and will soon get divorced. This says nothing whatsoever about the compatibility of the current rails community's direction with your direction, and it makes no useful predictions about the future development of the rails technology and its potential compatibility with your needs. It could be that the same forces driving this author away from rails are the ones which have brought it to your attention as something worth learning about and investing in.

gaius 10y ago

There are 2 kinds of languages, those people complain about and those no-one uses -- Stroustrup

Dillybob 10y ago

" learning something new I read about how its old and shitty" Oh, the irony: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8787117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8787117