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As someone who is heavily invested in building web app MVPs for clients on a budget, I've been considering moving to RoR and away from Laravel if not just for t

by davzie 8y ago

As someone who is heavily invested in building web app MVPs for clients on a budget, I've been considering moving to RoR and away from Laravel if not just for the simple scaffolding Rails would give me. Given you spent time in Django where some things are a little manual just like Laravel, would you recommend me diving deep into Rails given what my business aims to do? Hope you can help!

rorykoehler 8y ago
I built an app from idea to mvp in 2 days with Rails last month. It has user accounts, reddit style threaded comments, collaborative maps, algorithmic popularity feed for posts (like HN front page or reddit) and a bunch of other little stuff. I basically had an idea on a Saturday and by Monday morning I could demo it to my team.
- davzie 8y ago
  ffs, there goes my next few weeks! Thanks for the info ;)
  - rorykoehler 8y ago
    Start here: https://www.railstutorial.org/book https://www.railstutorial.org/book You'll fly through it.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      A word of warning to other people out there: in my experience, this tutorial is best suited to people who are already familiar with at least two of: 1. Web development 2. Ruby/Ruby on Rails 3. Test Driven Develepment If you're new to programming, start with something else. Trying to learn all three of these at the same time is not a recipe for success. Source: personal experience watching 100% of former mentees fail to make any progress with this tutorial.
      - davzie 8y ago
        Appreciate it, thanks! Been web-devvin' for 12 years now so I hope it seems understandable otherwise I seriously should just change career :D
      - rashkov 8y ago
        I found that skimming the Test Driven Development sections helped cut down the amount of material I needed to get through. Already knowing web development is a good prerequisite as well, and Michael Hartl's Learn Enough series should be able to fill in some of the gaps. Rails didn't make a lot of sense to me until I learned some Ruby, HTML, CSS, and enough Javascript & jquery to manipulate the DOM and make ajax calls. Rails is not really for new learners in my opinion, since the famous Rails magic can obscure what's happening under the hood, and the framework itself has grown and evolved over the years. Nodejs is better for new devs in my opinion, but Rails really shines once you have the basics and a couple of small apps under your belt.
  - matte_black 8y ago
    Don’t get too excited, with the right packages I could do the same thing in a day in React. Maybe less. And it would have optimistic UI, real-time updates and a static page distributed through a CDN.
    - chrshawkes 8y ago
      I'm sorry that sounds like a load of BS. I've worked with Django 8 years and React since 2014. Nobody can replicate what django does using a client side view library like React. At least not without downloading half the internet via NPM or Yarn. I suppose your talking about React-Router, Redux, etc... etc... and pulling it all together via some Node/Express single page app? I'll take django for simplicity any day and run React from it's templates.
      - matte_black 8y ago
        React is simple. First I'd start with creating the database in Postgres. Create tables to hold data and any views needed to represent joined tables for convenience. Once that's settled, the express server comes next to create a CRUD API to work with the data and handle user authentication and authorization. This is dead simple and once it works there's little you need to touch. The database handles any data dependent business logic. By this point you can make API calls and use the application through any REST client. So now I just need to create a React client to consume the API and give a great user experience. Don't need Redux. Grab React-Router and a couple packages for UI components and you'll be up and running with the MVP in no time. Checkmate.
        goatlover 8y ago
        > Create tables to hold data and any views needed to represent joined tables for convenience. Once that's settled, the express server comes next to create a CRUD API to work with the data and handle user authentication and authorization. Not sure how you're beating Rails or Django at this, unless you're a 10X developer going against a normal one. For that matter, I'm willing to bet an experienced Drupal developer using drush would be faster setting things up.
- dchuk 8y ago
  Can you share the app? If so, would be cool to post it here to get a discussion going on it: https://hackerforums.co/show-hf-f7/ https://hackerforums.co/show-hf-f7/
  - rorykoehler 8y ago
    I'll be posting a Show HN shortly . We put another 2 weeks worth of work into it to polish it and wire it up with mixpanel funnels etc.
TomK32 8y ago
Do you know about Rails Application Templates? http://guides.rubyonrails.org/rails_application_templates.html http://guides.rubyonrails.org/rails_application_templates.ht...

by davzie 8y ago

rorykoehler 8y ago

I built an app from idea to mvp in 2 days with Rails last month. It has user accounts, reddit style threaded comments, collaborative maps, algorithmic popularity feed for posts (like HN front page or reddit) and a bunch of other little stuff. I basically had an idea on a Saturday and by Monday morning I could demo it to my team.

davzie 8y ago
ffs, there goes my next few weeks! Thanks for the info ;)
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  Start here: https://www.railstutorial.org/book https://www.railstutorial.org/book You'll fly through it.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    A word of warning to other people out there: in my experience, this tutorial is best suited to people who are already familiar with at least two of: 1. Web development 2. Ruby/Ruby on Rails 3. Test Driven Develepment If you're new to programming, start with something else. Trying to learn all three of these at the same time is not a recipe for success. Source: personal experience watching 100% of former mentees fail to make any progress with this tutorial.
    - davzie 8y ago
      Appreciate it, thanks! Been web-devvin' for 12 years now so I hope it seems understandable otherwise I seriously should just change career :D
    - rashkov 8y ago
      I found that skimming the Test Driven Development sections helped cut down the amount of material I needed to get through. Already knowing web development is a good prerequisite as well, and Michael Hartl's Learn Enough series should be able to fill in some of the gaps. Rails didn't make a lot of sense to me until I learned some Ruby, HTML, CSS, and enough Javascript & jquery to manipulate the DOM and make ajax calls. Rails is not really for new learners in my opinion, since the famous Rails magic can obscure what's happening under the hood, and the framework itself has grown and evolved over the years. Nodejs is better for new devs in my opinion, but Rails really shines once you have the basics and a couple of small apps under your belt.
- matte_black 8y ago
  Don’t get too excited, with the right packages I could do the same thing in a day in React. Maybe less. And it would have optimistic UI, real-time updates and a static page distributed through a CDN.
  - chrshawkes 8y ago
    I'm sorry that sounds like a load of BS. I've worked with Django 8 years and React since 2014. Nobody can replicate what django does using a client side view library like React. At least not without downloading half the internet via NPM or Yarn. I suppose your talking about React-Router, Redux, etc... etc... and pulling it all together via some Node/Express single page app? I'll take django for simplicity any day and run React from it's templates.
    - matte_black 8y ago
      React is simple. First I'd start with creating the database in Postgres. Create tables to hold data and any views needed to represent joined tables for convenience. Once that's settled, the express server comes next to create a CRUD API to work with the data and handle user authentication and authorization. This is dead simple and once it works there's little you need to touch. The database handles any data dependent business logic. By this point you can make API calls and use the application through any REST client. So now I just need to create a React client to consume the API and give a great user experience. Don't need Redux. Grab React-Router and a couple packages for UI components and you'll be up and running with the MVP in no time. Checkmate.
      - goatlover 8y ago
        > Create tables to hold data and any views needed to represent joined tables for convenience. Once that's settled, the express server comes next to create a CRUD API to work with the data and handle user authentication and authorization. Not sure how you're beating Rails or Django at this, unless you're a 10X developer going against a normal one. For that matter, I'm willing to bet an experienced Drupal developer using drush would be faster setting things up.
dchuk 8y ago
Can you share the app? If so, would be cool to post it here to get a discussion going on it: https://hackerforums.co/show-hf-f7/ https://hackerforums.co/show-hf-f7/
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  I'll be posting a Show HN shortly . We put another 2 weeks worth of work into it to polish it and wire it up with mixpanel funnels etc.

TomK32 8y ago

Do you know about Rails Application Templates? http://guides.rubyonrails.org/rails_application_templates.html http://guides.rubyonrails.org/rails_application_templates.ht...