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Given its maturity and settled place in the programming landscape it's always nice to see that Rails can still evoke irrational disdain in HN comments.

pwelch 8y ago
100%
gameswithgo 8y ago
Why is irrational to hate languages that are orders of magnitude slower than are necessary?
- jb3689 8y ago
  Something-something IO something-something
- goatlover 8y ago
  It's irrational to hate without mentioning tradeoffs. Sure, if performance is your only metric, then Ruby is a bad choice. But that's rarely the case, particularly with the web.
- rpeden 8y ago
  That's a reasonable question to ask. I think in general, there are lots of reasons to like a language outside of its runtime performance. I love working with Go and Rust due to their performance. Any I work every day in C#, which ends up nice and quick, too. But I still love Ruby due to its expressiveness, and the way it works just seems to align with the way I think. But that's poetically because I used Smalltalk in the past and I like the bits of it that Ruby borrowed. :) To answer to original question, though. I'd say it's irrational to hate languages that are slower than necessary because it's irrational to hate a programming language at all. No matter what language it is, it's just a bunch of words on a screen. Use the ones you like and don't waste any brain cycles thinking about the ones you don't. Unless you're locked in a cube farm and forced to write Cobol at gunpoint all day. Hate might be rational then.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  The thing you performance zealots never seem to realize is that the speed of your language basically doesn't matter for web apps, because there is usually at least 200ms just in transit time to and from the server. An extra 30-50ms spent rendering a result simply doesn't move the needle.
- inerte 8y ago
  Because a rational person knows that there are trade-offs in programming languages. Is it rational to love the fastest languages? Do you rank your programming language love by an arbitrary speed index?

pwelch 8y ago

100%

gameswithgo 8y ago

Why is irrational to hate languages that are orders of magnitude slower than are necessary?

jb3689 8y ago
Something-something IO something-something
goatlover 8y ago
It's irrational to hate without mentioning tradeoffs. Sure, if performance is your only metric, then Ruby is a bad choice. But that's rarely the case, particularly with the web.
rpeden 8y ago
That's a reasonable question to ask. I think in general, there are lots of reasons to like a language outside of its runtime performance. I love working with Go and Rust due to their performance. Any I work every day in C#, which ends up nice and quick, too. But I still love Ruby due to its expressiveness, and the way it works just seems to align with the way I think. But that's poetically because I used Smalltalk in the past and I like the bits of it that Ruby borrowed. :) To answer to original question, though. I'd say it's irrational to hate languages that are slower than necessary because it's irrational to hate a programming language at all. No matter what language it is, it's just a bunch of words on a screen. Use the ones you like and don't waste any brain cycles thinking about the ones you don't. Unless you're locked in a cube farm and forced to write Cobol at gunpoint all day. Hate might be rational then.
toasterlovin 8y ago
The thing you performance zealots never seem to realize is that the speed of your language basically doesn't matter for web apps, because there is usually at least 200ms just in transit time to and from the server. An extra 30-50ms spent rendering a result simply doesn't move the needle.
inerte 8y ago
Because a rational person knows that there are trade-offs in programming languages. Is it rational to love the fastest languages? Do you rank your programming language love by an arbitrary speed index?