6 ms·

I feel like Rails is really starting to see some new life that has felt a bit absent from it for a while now. It almost seems like there is a new generation of

by mhoad 6y ago

I feel like Rails is really starting to see some new life that has felt a bit absent from it for a while now. It almost seems like there is a new generation of people extremely burned out from the constant churn of the “JS-all-the-things” movement that just took over most of web development for the past several years. There is a lot of exciting stuff landing in Rails and it’s surrounding ecosystems at the moment and I think it’s still probably the best choice for many new SAAS / web app based companies and startups.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Rails was always great, JS just paid a lot more... It felt great to get back into it having people pay to migrate their Rails apps to React and Node.
- gav 6y ago
  It's funny you say that, I've seen people pick a tech stack based on developer cost. Maybe five years back I had a client in NYC who had a predominantly Java stack, but due to internal politics, wouldn't pay more than 135k for a senior developer when the market was wanting at least 25-30k more than that. Everyone they hired was pretty terrible. At the time, Node developers were cheaper, so we split the application in two, wrapped all the old Java code with APIs, which was then able to be maintained by a small team while the front-end and any new features were all re-written with Node. It was architectural a better system--but the driving factor was really developer cost (the business hated to make any investments in technology). The problem was that Node got popular and it got harder and harder to hire good Node developers at what the company wanted to pay. They had a big re-org and fired everyone I knew, so I don't know what they are doing now, but I often wonder if they just repeated the process with whatever up-and-coming language was more hip.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    > I've seen people pick a tech stack based on developer cost You'd be surprised how often cost of developers comes into the overall conversation especially when you have tech sprawl and have to spend to get qualified people. I've seen projects green-light just on the premise that removing legacy code will lead to a payroll reduction.
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    Cost is always one of the resources people have to manage... Would you buy your laptop for 70% of you annual salary, even though it literally lasts for a few years and recoups it's cost fairly fast?
- sanderjd 6y ago
  I've been out of this world for awhile so it's super interesting to see that JS was paying more than Rails. It was the opposite back in my day :)
- rubber_duck 6y ago
  What's great about Rails ? Serious question from someone who landed into a mature Rails app and is now decidedly running away from that ecosystem after a year working in it. Rails looks like an early take on MVC that was setup around fast project creation and encourages unmaintainable code - concerns are straight out retarded (a design pattern that encourages breaking encapsulation and makes dependencies impossible to trace) and fat models encourage coupling things that don't need to be coupled. Then there's Ruby which in my opinion goes against Zen of Python which I'm a fan of - aliases all over the place for same thing, pointless name shortening and stuff to sacrifice readability, rails breaking conventions of standard library... In the context of when it got popular I understand why it got the hype - replacing the PHP SQL in views garbage and Java 6 verbosity with XML configure everything, and the horrible ASP monstrosity. These days I'd take Python as a more popular language, that I would say is better designed and has far better Windows support. NPM/TypeScript and structural static typing is getting really good as well but is not as mature - but code sharing between client and server is a real thing. Go emerged since the time of Rails hype. .NET and JVM languages and frameworks got a lot better and scale far better with big code bases. I don't really see where Rails is great compared to alternatives, it feels like legacy at this point. I'm not saying you can't write good maintainable apps in Rails either - I'm just saying other frameworks and languages will make it easier IMO.
  - badrequest 6y ago
    Regardless of one's views on Rails (not a fan, personally), I think we can all agree that there is plenty of room to criticize it without using ableist slurs.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - timtamboy63 6y ago
    I've been using Rails for the past 6 or 7 years. The biggest positive is that almost any feature you need is available as a gem. We're using for an early stage startup right now, and it's crazy how quickly we've been able to crank out features. I've looked at the JS and Python ecosystems, and haven't seen the same mature ecosystem. I don't disagree with your point around large Rails apps becoming un-maintainable. I think as long as you have a few developers who have dealt with big Rails app and know what to avoid (concerns, fat models, etc), it's not too hard to write a maintainable app in Rails.
techscruggs 6y ago
What are some of the other exciting things happening in the Rails world these days?
- czbond 6y ago
  Thanks for asking - was curious the same. Always loved Rails, but then got into the "JS" toolset - which has been a cluster of extra required work.
- mhoad 6y ago
  There’s a new release about to drop which is Rails 6.1 that covers some interesting developments. GitHub took all of their code associated with running “web scale” applications that need to talk to multiple databases at the same time and put that into a dead simple native Rails framework. Basecamp have spent the last couple of years (I think?) working in secret on what they claim is an entirely new way of doing all things front end. There isn’t a LOT of details on that at the moment and it’s kind of built up as a big surprise. But everyone who has had a behind the scenes look seems unusually excited. There’s a kind of interesting web based interface for describing and developing all kinds of boilerplate parts of your application that could really speed up development time https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/35489 https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/35489 Some cool security stuff like this https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1268236728134889475?s=21 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1268236728134889475?s=21 and promoting things like WebAuthn to be first class citizens. But basically at this stage you have 3 major contributors of Shopify, Basecamp / Hey and Github extracting huge parts of their internal systems and rewriting them as mini Rails frameworks with famously simple APIs for people to use. That’s obviously in addition to everyone / everything else. I think the future looks bright.
  - TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
    > an entirely new way of doing all things front end. Are you referring to ViewComponent: https://github.com/github/view_component https://github.com/github/view_component? As someone who's happily been continuing to make Rails apps for the past few years (and avoiding Angular like the plague after being burned badly with it), this seems really intriguing, but I'm waiting on the 6.1 release before I try it.
bbbobbb 6y ago
I am one of those "refugees", although not related to JS specifically. I think the last nudge way Hey releasing which made me consider RoR after all these years. The motivation on my part is simple - I am getting really tired of microservices everywhere. I understand why they might make sense in large organizations but the endless splitting of stuff that works (or could work if the energy was invested in fixing existing code) to the point where you have 3-5 services per developer is tiring. Anyways, ranting aside, I have been learning Rails on the weekends and it's fun, even if there aren't that many job opportunities. If I later end up working in an ecosystem where the majestic monolith is something to aspire to, even better.

by mhoad 6y ago

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

Rails was always great, JS just paid a lot more... It felt great to get back into it having people pay to migrate their Rails apps to React and Node.

gav 6y ago
It's funny you say that, I've seen people pick a tech stack based on developer cost. Maybe five years back I had a client in NYC who had a predominantly Java stack, but due to internal politics, wouldn't pay more than 135k for a senior developer when the market was wanting at least 25-30k more than that. Everyone they hired was pretty terrible. At the time, Node developers were cheaper, so we split the application in two, wrapped all the old Java code with APIs, which was then able to be maintained by a small team while the front-end and any new features were all re-written with Node. It was architectural a better system--but the driving factor was really developer cost (the business hated to make any investments in technology). The problem was that Node got popular and it got harder and harder to hire good Node developers at what the company wanted to pay. They had a big re-org and fired everyone I knew, so I don't know what they are doing now, but I often wonder if they just repeated the process with whatever up-and-coming language was more hip.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  > I've seen people pick a tech stack based on developer cost You'd be surprised how often cost of developers comes into the overall conversation especially when you have tech sprawl and have to spend to get qualified people. I've seen projects green-light just on the premise that removing legacy code will lead to a payroll reduction.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  Cost is always one of the resources people have to manage... Would you buy your laptop for 70% of you annual salary, even though it literally lasts for a few years and recoups it's cost fairly fast?
sanderjd 6y ago
I've been out of this world for awhile so it's super interesting to see that JS was paying more than Rails. It was the opposite back in my day :)
rubber_duck 6y ago
What's great about Rails ? Serious question from someone who landed into a mature Rails app and is now decidedly running away from that ecosystem after a year working in it. Rails looks like an early take on MVC that was setup around fast project creation and encourages unmaintainable code - concerns are straight out retarded (a design pattern that encourages breaking encapsulation and makes dependencies impossible to trace) and fat models encourage coupling things that don't need to be coupled. Then there's Ruby which in my opinion goes against Zen of Python which I'm a fan of - aliases all over the place for same thing, pointless name shortening and stuff to sacrifice readability, rails breaking conventions of standard library... In the context of when it got popular I understand why it got the hype - replacing the PHP SQL in views garbage and Java 6 verbosity with XML configure everything, and the horrible ASP monstrosity. These days I'd take Python as a more popular language, that I would say is better designed and has far better Windows support. NPM/TypeScript and structural static typing is getting really good as well but is not as mature - but code sharing between client and server is a real thing. Go emerged since the time of Rails hype. .NET and JVM languages and frameworks got a lot better and scale far better with big code bases. I don't really see where Rails is great compared to alternatives, it feels like legacy at this point. I'm not saying you can't write good maintainable apps in Rails either - I'm just saying other frameworks and languages will make it easier IMO.
- badrequest 6y ago
  Regardless of one's views on Rails (not a fan, personally), I think we can all agree that there is plenty of room to criticize it without using ableist slurs.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- timtamboy63 6y ago
  I've been using Rails for the past 6 or 7 years. The biggest positive is that almost any feature you need is available as a gem. We're using for an early stage startup right now, and it's crazy how quickly we've been able to crank out features. I've looked at the JS and Python ecosystems, and haven't seen the same mature ecosystem. I don't disagree with your point around large Rails apps becoming un-maintainable. I think as long as you have a few developers who have dealt with big Rails app and know what to avoid (concerns, fat models, etc), it's not too hard to write a maintainable app in Rails.

techscruggs 6y ago

What are some of the other exciting things happening in the Rails world these days?

czbond 6y ago
Thanks for asking - was curious the same. Always loved Rails, but then got into the "JS" toolset - which has been a cluster of extra required work.
mhoad 6y ago
There’s a new release about to drop which is Rails 6.1 that covers some interesting developments. GitHub took all of their code associated with running “web scale” applications that need to talk to multiple databases at the same time and put that into a dead simple native Rails framework. Basecamp have spent the last couple of years (I think?) working in secret on what they claim is an entirely new way of doing all things front end. There isn’t a LOT of details on that at the moment and it’s kind of built up as a big surprise. But everyone who has had a behind the scenes look seems unusually excited. There’s a kind of interesting web based interface for describing and developing all kinds of boilerplate parts of your application that could really speed up development time https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/35489 https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/35489 Some cool security stuff like this https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1268236728134889475?s=21 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1268236728134889475?s=21 and promoting things like WebAuthn to be first class citizens. But basically at this stage you have 3 major contributors of Shopify, Basecamp / Hey and Github extracting huge parts of their internal systems and rewriting them as mini Rails frameworks with famously simple APIs for people to use. That’s obviously in addition to everyone / everything else. I think the future looks bright.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  > an entirely new way of doing all things front end. Are you referring to ViewComponent: https://github.com/github/view_component https://github.com/github/view_component? As someone who's happily been continuing to make Rails apps for the past few years (and avoiding Angular like the plague after being burned badly with it), this seems really intriguing, but I'm waiting on the 6.1 release before I try it.

bbbobbb 6y ago

I am one of those "refugees", although not related to JS specifically. I think the last nudge way Hey releasing which made me consider RoR after all these years. The motivation on my part is simple - I am getting really tired of microservices everywhere. I understand why they might make sense in large organizations but the endless splitting of stuff that works (or could work if the energy was invested in fixing existing code) to the point where you have 3-5 services per developer is tiring. Anyways, ranting aside, I have been learning Rails on the weekends and it's fun, even if there aren't that many job opportunities. If I later end up working in an ecosystem where the majestic monolith is something to aspire to, even better.