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One thing you'll run into with rails in 2018 for web development is it's going to be hard to find developers and only getting harder by the day. Rails developer

One thing you'll run into with rails in 2018 for web development is it's going to be hard to find developers and only getting harder by the day. Rails developers are aging. They are no longer your 20 year old hipsters, that stereotype has long since gone, they have families now and boy are they EXPENSIVE. React is what people new to web development are LEARNING and that's all you need to care about. You can get react developers, who can fundamentally produce the same thing (your run of the mill CRUD apps), for a lot cheaper and they are (more) readily available. Anyone who claims that rails does something magic the others don't do by now is showing their allegiance rather than making a factual technical statement. In a few years I expect the problem to worsen as react chips away at rails, and with no standardized reactive SPA (maybe save for ember), more and more developers who aren't die hard rails/ruby guys are going to be rebranding themselves, who will then be in the pool with the rest of the react developers, which, also seems to have crossed an inflection point recently. I also encountered a few guys who had rails experience but wouldn't take the job because they didn't want to risk falling behind on react. Sad but true. This post isn't supposed to come off as agist, its just an observation when working in a tech field that is largely driven off fashionableness, trends and approval, rather than strict technical merit.

RomanPushkin 8y ago
Congrats! You're in DHH's twitter and in Ruby Weekly!
ryanbrunner 8y ago
Rails and React aren't comparable technologies. Most Rails developers are using some sort of front-end framework (whether React, Vue or something else) for at least a significant portion of their code. Virtually all React developers are going to work with a backend of some flavour. For better or worse, the days of writing web applications that primarily ship HTML from server to browser are long over. Ignoring that, I do think it's fair to say that "Rails does something that most other frameworks don't", which is provide a batteries-included, convention over configuration framework that makes a lot of decisions for you and lets you work with an extremely flexible language. That may not be everyone's cup of tea, but that's not what the Javascript world is selling right now (quite the opposite).
bdcravens 8y ago
Why would you compare a backend with a frontend framework? Are you implying Node on the backend? React developers are dependent on a backend, be it Node, a managed solution like Firebase, or Rails. I don't think it's a matter of React instead of Rails, but rather, Rails developers are learning they must add frontend skills, and React seems the safe bet. Many are probably shifting to Node, given the idea (true or not) that Javascript in the entire stack makes the most sense.
- iamleppert 8y ago
  I’m talking about your traditional rails app with classic templates views and controllers (no SPA) vs. react + node (express) stack.
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    Guess I was correct about the unspoken assumption :-) Keep in mind there's no real React default. You can pair React with a Rails backend pretty easily (or Elixir or .NET or ColdFusion or PHP or ....) It's really just a matter of what you have in place or what your developers are already competent in.
LargeWu 8y ago
I'm expensive because I'm experienced, not because of the technology stack. I would expect to get paid the same whether I'm coding in Node or Rails. Also, I don't think anybody is arguing that Rails can do things other stacks can't do; conversely one can also use React with a Rails backend. But I do absolutely believe that Rails generally provides faster development times, because it has pretty useful abstractions and components work well together out of the box. I can't say the same for Node. I think your point about devs either being Node or Ruby people is misguided. I did Rails for a lot of years, but have been doing Node for the past 2. It's not because I "made the switch", it's because the job I took was a Node shop. Knowing languages and frameworks is not mutually exclusive.

RomanPushkin 8y ago

Congrats! You're in DHH's twitter and in Ruby Weekly!

ryanbrunner 8y ago

Rails and React aren't comparable technologies. Most Rails developers are using some sort of front-end framework (whether React, Vue or something else) for at least a significant portion of their code. Virtually all React developers are going to work with a backend of some flavour. For better or worse, the days of writing web applications that primarily ship HTML from server to browser are long over. Ignoring that, I do think it's fair to say that "Rails does something that most other frameworks don't", which is provide a batteries-included, convention over configuration framework that makes a lot of decisions for you and lets you work with an extremely flexible language. That may not be everyone's cup of tea, but that's not what the Javascript world is selling right now (quite the opposite).

bdcravens 8y ago

Why would you compare a backend with a frontend framework? Are you implying Node on the backend? React developers are dependent on a backend, be it Node, a managed solution like Firebase, or Rails. I don't think it's a matter of React instead of Rails, but rather, Rails developers are learning they must add frontend skills, and React seems the safe bet. Many are probably shifting to Node, given the idea (true or not) that Javascript in the entire stack makes the most sense.

iamleppert 8y ago
I’m talking about your traditional rails app with classic templates views and controllers (no SPA) vs. react + node (express) stack.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Guess I was correct about the unspoken assumption :-) Keep in mind there's no real React default. You can pair React with a Rails backend pretty easily (or Elixir or .NET or ColdFusion or PHP or ....) It's really just a matter of what you have in place or what your developers are already competent in.

LargeWu 8y ago

I'm expensive because I'm experienced, not because of the technology stack. I would expect to get paid the same whether I'm coding in Node or Rails. Also, I don't think anybody is arguing that Rails can do things other stacks can't do; conversely one can also use React with a Rails backend. But I do absolutely believe that Rails generally provides faster development times, because it has pretty useful abstractions and components work well together out of the box. I can't say the same for Node. I think your point about devs either being Node or Ruby people is misguided. I did Rails for a lot of years, but have been doing Node for the past 2. It's not because I "made the switch", it's because the job I took was a Node shop. Knowing languages and frameworks is not mutually exclusive.