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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, is

by 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.

by scj 10y ago

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.