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Great question. The funny thing is, 6 years ago, if you'd ask the same question (and I'm guess that's what you're coming from) the go-to answer on HN would've b

Great question. The funny thing is, 6 years ago, if you'd ask the same question (and I'm guess that's what you're coming from) the go-to answer on HN would've been Rails / Django something. Where both will allow you to build a basic crud app in 20 minutes. Since then, everybody has gone heavily into various javascript stacks, and the norm has become to deal with 20 different packages to build (somewhat) the same thing. And the first hour will easily be spent researching different dependencies, trying to get them all to work how you'd want etc. It's easy to see this as a horrible backwards progression, but the reality might be a bit nuanced. The easiest way to get a basic crud app up and running these days is probably still some sort of rails/django stack. But today's requirements in terms of UX / dynamism (is that a word?) require you to end up building things differently, so even if you get up and running fast with a rails app, you'd end up having to build up a pretty hefty JS stack in the end, so you'd basically be delaying the inevitable. So the answer really depends on what level of "good enough" you're going for.

mercer 9y ago
> But today's requirements in terms of UX / dynamism (is that a word?) require you to end up building things differently, so even if you get up and running fast with a rails app, you'd end up having to build up a pretty hefty JS stack in the end, so you'd basically be delaying the inevitable. I'm starting to wonder to what degree this is actually true. Most people I know, all along the spectrum of 'computer literacy', complain about the slowness and brokenness of many sites and web apps. On the other hand I've never heard anyone complain about a lack of 'dynamism'. To be clear, some degree of interactivity is often useful. But I can't help but feel that it's quite often not at all necessary to move things like routing, validation, and (almost) complete page changes to the client side, at least not as long as it increases complexity to such a degree.
- nerdwaller 9y ago
  I came to say something similar, it’s easy in tech to see something could be “better” but from the outside most people just want something that works and is easy to use (pretty is bonus). Secondly I’d argue that if “dynamicism” matters, choosing rails or Django doesn’t hinder that ability as a lot of that is simply presentation layer concerns.
farnsworthy 9y ago
Do you even Docker?

mercer 9y ago

> But today's requirements in terms of UX / dynamism (is that a word?) require you to end up building things differently, so even if you get up and running fast with a rails app, you'd end up having to build up a pretty hefty JS stack in the end, so you'd basically be delaying the inevitable. I'm starting to wonder to what degree this is actually true. Most people I know, all along the spectrum of 'computer literacy', complain about the slowness and brokenness of many sites and web apps. On the other hand I've never heard anyone complain about a lack of 'dynamism'. To be clear, some degree of interactivity is often useful. But I can't help but feel that it's quite often not at all necessary to move things like routing, validation, and (almost) complete page changes to the client side, at least not as long as it increases complexity to such a degree.

nerdwaller 9y ago
I came to say something similar, it’s easy in tech to see something could be “better” but from the outside most people just want something that works and is easy to use (pretty is bonus). Secondly I’d argue that if “dynamicism” matters, choosing rails or Django doesn’t hinder that ability as a lot of that is simply presentation layer concerns.

farnsworthy 9y ago

Do you even Docker?