5 ms·

I can't find the right place for Ruby on Rails here. It doesn't fit.

Dirlewanger 8y ago
Rails was never really a major leap forward in anything, more so an evolution with convention-over-configuration and a strong community presence that established best practices early. It also hasn't been "cool" for years, it's an entrenched player that "just works". One could argue with all the Rubyists going to Elixir that's part of the cycle, but for many people that's been a net positive. And then there's those altogether dropping Elixir for Go...
- jules 8y ago
  Rails was a major leap forward because the competition was really bad: PHP and Java Struts.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  I think that Rails using Ruby was a big deal. It was definitely different. Not sure if it was forward, backwards or lateral but it certainly was a big change beyond just "convention of configuration."
- cpursley 8y ago
  I doubt you'll find many people dropping Elixir for Go... And Ruby was a major leap forward ~ in productivity.
- dnautics 8y ago
  If we believe the cycle model, then the people dropping elixir for go will come back when they're tired of dealing with kubernetes and when they realize that being a dynamic language isn't all that terrible (if done correctly).
- sanderjd 8y ago
  Yeah, I think this is actually calling out a major weakness in the original comment's hype cycle model. Sometimes step #5 ("Five years pass...") doesn't happen in that way. Sometimes what happens is that the new technology has been found to be generally useful, though imperfect, as everything is. People may be evolving it in different directions, perhaps incorporating elements of the old technology the new one replaced, but it isn't being fundamentally abandoned. The tough part is that you don't know which version of step #5 will happen when you're surveying the world at step #4. If it was easy to figure this stuff out, they wouldn't pay us to try :)
EdSharkey 8y ago
Didn't Rails have all kinds of scaling issues for non-trivial apps and loads?
- wuliwong 8y ago
  Twitter had issues with stability but I would say that they were under MUCH heavier than a 'non-trivial' load. I also think that it remains an open question as to whether the old twitter was just simply not well written at first or if it was really a fundamental issue with Rails. There are many very large websites that are claimed to be written in Rails. For example: github, airbnb, kickstarter, basecamp,...These seem to be scaling fine.
  - meesterdude 8y ago
    FWIW twitter switched out of rails before some of the huge performance benefits made their way into ruby itself. A rails stack could handle twitter capacity these days, given ruby/rails improvements made since.
philwelch 8y ago
After Rails burned through the hype cycle, its entire niche had disappeared. The skinny-jeans hipsters had moved on to single page apps and Node.JS and the "let's try and use Rails to write backend services" crowd had dispersed to a variety of better technologies.
- jashmatthews 8y ago
  That might be how it seems if you hang around on HN but activity in the Ruby and Rails communities is still increasing. New conferences, new implementations, and thousands of new developers.
mavelikara 8y ago
Rails' extensive use of monkey patching to implement features is currently out of favor, from what I understand. Also, by merging Merb in Rails 3, Rails got a fresh lease of life. This is similar to how Struts lived on by rebranding WebWork as itself. Finally, Ruby shows up prominently as a language developers dislike: https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/10/31/disliked-programming-languages/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/10/31/disliked-programming-l...
- mavelikara 8y ago
  Edit: Also, some of those features providing better development ergonomics turned out to cause massive security issues in production systems (eg: https://gist.github.com/peternixey/1978249 https://gist.github.com/peternixey/1978249).

Rails was never really a major leap forward in anything, more so an evolution with convention-over-configuration and a strong community presence that established best practices early. It also hasn't been "cool" for years, it's an entrenched player that "just works". One could argue with all the Rubyists going to Elixir that's part of the cycle, but for many people that's been a net positive. And then there's those altogether dropping Elixir for Go...

jules 8y ago
Rails was a major leap forward because the competition was really bad: PHP and Java Struts.
wuliwong 8y ago
I think that Rails using Ruby was a big deal. It was definitely different. Not sure if it was forward, backwards or lateral but it certainly was a big change beyond just "convention of configuration."
cpursley 8y ago
I doubt you'll find many people dropping Elixir for Go... And Ruby was a major leap forward ~ in productivity.
dnautics 8y ago
If we believe the cycle model, then the people dropping elixir for go will come back when they're tired of dealing with kubernetes and when they realize that being a dynamic language isn't all that terrible (if done correctly).
sanderjd 8y ago
Yeah, I think this is actually calling out a major weakness in the original comment's hype cycle model. Sometimes step #5 ("Five years pass...") doesn't happen in that way. Sometimes what happens is that the new technology has been found to be generally useful, though imperfect, as everything is. People may be evolving it in different directions, perhaps incorporating elements of the old technology the new one replaced, but it isn't being fundamentally abandoned. The tough part is that you don't know which version of step #5 will happen when you're surveying the world at step #4. If it was easy to figure this stuff out, they wouldn't pay us to try :)

EdSharkey 8y ago

Didn't Rails have all kinds of scaling issues for non-trivial apps and loads?

wuliwong 8y ago
Twitter had issues with stability but I would say that they were under MUCH heavier than a 'non-trivial' load. I also think that it remains an open question as to whether the old twitter was just simply not well written at first or if it was really a fundamental issue with Rails. There are many very large websites that are claimed to be written in Rails. For example: github, airbnb, kickstarter, basecamp,...These seem to be scaling fine.
- meesterdude 8y ago
  FWIW twitter switched out of rails before some of the huge performance benefits made their way into ruby itself. A rails stack could handle twitter capacity these days, given ruby/rails improvements made since.

philwelch 8y ago

After Rails burned through the hype cycle, its entire niche had disappeared. The skinny-jeans hipsters had moved on to single page apps and Node.JS and the "let's try and use Rails to write backend services" crowd had dispersed to a variety of better technologies.

jashmatthews 8y ago
That might be how it seems if you hang around on HN but activity in the Ruby and Rails communities is still increasing. New conferences, new implementations, and thousands of new developers.

mavelikara 8y ago

Rails' extensive use of monkey patching to implement features is currently out of favor, from what I understand. Also, by merging Merb in Rails 3, Rails got a fresh lease of life. This is similar to how Struts lived on by rebranding WebWork as itself. Finally, Ruby shows up prominently as a language developers dislike: https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/10/31/disliked-programming-languages/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/10/31/disliked-programming-l...

mavelikara 8y ago
Edit: Also, some of those features providing better development ergonomics turned out to cause massive security issues in production systems (eg: https://gist.github.com/peternixey/1978249 https://gist.github.com/peternixey/1978249).