5 ms·

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.

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.