6 ms·

And 99% of thse jobs are legacy RoR codebases, big hairy balls of mud. Good for job security and pays well (somebody has to support it all), but somewhat boring

by pampa 6y ago

And 99% of thse jobs are legacy RoR codebases, big hairy balls of mud. Good for job security and pays well (somebody has to support it all), but somewhat boring. Also the ruby ecosystem is in decay. A lot of libraries are abandoned or on life-support - just do a random search on rubygems and check release dates.

joelbluminator 6y ago
"legacy RoR" , so if it's not a 2 year old startup "changing the world" - it's boring? Working in Stripe / Shopify / Github is boring? I'm pretty sure btw new projects are being started in Ruby in bigger numbers than Elixir (which isn't saying much, but still). I don't really love those language wars but I don't see why Elixir has to keep trying to assert itself by dissing Ruby. First - at least by numbers, it's way way smaller. Second - it should be more confident in itself.
- pampa 6y ago
  I'm not bashing ruby or something. I love ruby, I have been using ruby/rails since rails 0.9. Still using ruby with roda/sequel, and i think it is the best language to rapidly prototype and explore ideas. But the reality is, that all the interesting and cool stuff is happening somewhere else now. Ruby is still a great language, but the active community outside rails is shrinking and the creativity isnt there anymore. People prefer to explore novel ideas in different languages now - rust, go, elixir etc, even if they do ruby for a living. And rails is showing its age too. Every rails project i encountered was a petrified spagetti monolyth that had to be broken up and refactored into smaller pieces.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    No argument with you there, Ruby / Rails is pretty boring by now. As someone who's looking for a stable stack I'm absolutely fine with that.
    - RandoHolmes 6y ago
      No framework that acts like Rails should be considered a stable stack. If the answer to the question of "will it be supported in 5 years" is no, it can never be considered a "stable stack".
      - joelbluminator 6y ago
        Can you clarify? I don't see what's so unstable about Rails. Probably webpacker was the biggest change in Rails 6 and that's not mandatory.
        RandoHolmes 6y ago
        If I write an application in asp.net core it will continue functioning on the most recent version of .net core and asp.net core 5 years from now. If I do the same thing on RoR it will not, guaranteed. I've lost count of the number of times I've gotten a new client and had them on a web framework that was EOL, on a version of the language that was EOL, and on an OS that was EOL (because they couldn't get the EOL language/framework running on a modern OS). Anytime you use something like RoR you're automatically taking on a higher maintenance burden because you MUST upgrade or you'll find yourself in a spot where you're trying to decide if you want to rewrite or pull it up to the newest version. No part of that description screams stability.
        joelbluminator 6y ago
        OK, stability is relative. Compared to Node / Elixir Rails is still pretty stable. I'd put it with stacks like Laravel / Django. ASP.net probably changes less, I agree. But .net core was a huge change though, kind of a new framework right? new runtime even.
        AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        I have an Elixir app from four years ago that still runs with no issues, even on the current version. Can you elaborate? There's no plan to ever have a v2.0.
nickjj 6y ago
> A lot of libraries are abandoned or on life-support - just do a random search on rubygems and check release dates. Every language has this problem. Even Elixir. The sole maintainer of the most popular AWS library isn't using AWS anymore so he stopped maintaining the package. He tried to give the project to another maintainer but after months of asking, no one wanted to take over the project. There's also lots of Elixir libs where it looks like some package author was super gung-ho about making something and then the repo hasn't been touched in 4 years. I see the same thing in Python too but one big difference is, with Python (and Ruby and Go and PHP) you often have officially supported libraries for things like AWS, Stripe and other important / popular services. With Elixir, you'll be on the hook for writing your own clients for most services. I've asked Stripe a few times if they will add an Elixir client officially but they always give the same response of it's not worth it because there's not enough demand. I want Elixir to get more popular but it's a very sketchy world outside of a few Elixir packages that are either developed / maintained by the core team, or have a huge following because it's solving a problem that pretty much everyone has. Basically you need to be prepared to develop libraries and a lot of glue code yourself to get started before solving your "real" business logic.

by pampa 6y ago

joelbluminator 6y ago

"legacy RoR" , so if it's not a 2 year old startup "changing the world" - it's boring? Working in Stripe / Shopify / Github is boring? I'm pretty sure btw new projects are being started in Ruby in bigger numbers than Elixir (which isn't saying much, but still). I don't really love those language wars but I don't see why Elixir has to keep trying to assert itself by dissing Ruby. First - at least by numbers, it's way way smaller. Second - it should be more confident in itself.

pampa 6y ago
I'm not bashing ruby or something. I love ruby, I have been using ruby/rails since rails 0.9. Still using ruby with roda/sequel, and i think it is the best language to rapidly prototype and explore ideas. But the reality is, that all the interesting and cool stuff is happening somewhere else now. Ruby is still a great language, but the active community outside rails is shrinking and the creativity isnt there anymore. People prefer to explore novel ideas in different languages now - rust, go, elixir etc, even if they do ruby for a living. And rails is showing its age too. Every rails project i encountered was a petrified spagetti monolyth that had to be broken up and refactored into smaller pieces.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  No argument with you there, Ruby / Rails is pretty boring by now. As someone who's looking for a stable stack I'm absolutely fine with that.
  - RandoHolmes 6y ago
    No framework that acts like Rails should be considered a stable stack. If the answer to the question of "will it be supported in 5 years" is no, it can never be considered a "stable stack".
    - joelbluminator 6y ago
      Can you clarify? I don't see what's so unstable about Rails. Probably webpacker was the biggest change in Rails 6 and that's not mandatory.
      - RandoHolmes 6y ago
        If I write an application in asp.net core it will continue functioning on the most recent version of .net core and asp.net core 5 years from now. If I do the same thing on RoR it will not, guaranteed. I've lost count of the number of times I've gotten a new client and had them on a web framework that was EOL, on a version of the language that was EOL, and on an OS that was EOL (because they couldn't get the EOL language/framework running on a modern OS). Anytime you use something like RoR you're automatically taking on a higher maintenance burden because you MUST upgrade or you'll find yourself in a spot where you're trying to decide if you want to rewrite or pull it up to the newest version. No part of that description screams stability.
        joelbluminator 6y ago
        OK, stability is relative. Compared to Node / Elixir Rails is still pretty stable. I'd put it with stacks like Laravel / Django. ASP.net probably changes less, I agree. But .net core was a huge change though, kind of a new framework right? new runtime even.
        AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        I have an Elixir app from four years ago that still runs with no issues, even on the current version. Can you elaborate? There's no plan to ever have a v2.0.

nickjj 6y ago

> A lot of libraries are abandoned or on life-support - just do a random search on rubygems and check release dates. Every language has this problem. Even Elixir. The sole maintainer of the most popular AWS library isn't using AWS anymore so he stopped maintaining the package. He tried to give the project to another maintainer but after months of asking, no one wanted to take over the project. There's also lots of Elixir libs where it looks like some package author was super gung-ho about making something and then the repo hasn't been touched in 4 years. I see the same thing in Python too but one big difference is, with Python (and Ruby and Go and PHP) you often have officially supported libraries for things like AWS, Stripe and other important / popular services. With Elixir, you'll be on the hook for writing your own clients for most services. I've asked Stripe a few times if they will add an Elixir client officially but they always give the same response of it's not worth it because there's not enough demand. I want Elixir to get more popular but it's a very sketchy world outside of a few Elixir packages that are either developed / maintained by the core team, or have a huge following because it's solving a problem that pretty much everyone has. Basically you need to be prepared to develop libraries and a lot of glue code yourself to get started before solving your "real" business logic.