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This has been my experience. For the majority of applications that are developed using Ruby —- which means Rails —- the Ruby universe is performance and mature.

This has been my experience. For the majority of applications that are developed using Ruby —- which means Rails —- the Ruby universe is performance and mature. I’m keeping an eye out for what happens in the Rust community, but for now Rails remains a solid choice for spinning up most any web application.

Alupis 6y ago
I could be mistaken, but don't Rust and Ruby target completely different types of problems? Last I had heard, Rust was targeted at being a "Systems" language, ie. an alternative to ASM/C/C++, where Ruby is basically a webserver/backend language. What makes you think Rust will be used as a "Ruby on Rails" replacement anytime soon?
- kelnos 6y ago
  Crates like actix-web, rocket, and warp do target web application development. They're certainly not Rails replacements yet (and maybe don't aim to be), but it's not unreasonable to expect a Ruby developer who has learned and likes Rust to do some web backend development using Rust.
  - afavour 6y ago
    Having done some Rust development myself... I love the language, but if I was tackling a problem that could be solved with something like Rails, I'd use Rails. Rust is awesome for performance critical stuff but there's a lot of memory management overhead for a CRUD app.
  - rapsey 6y ago
    I've been writing Rust full time for years. Rust will never ever be as easy and productive as Ruby.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Never claimed it would be. But I've been bitten enough professionally with services written in Python and Ruby eventually costing the company a ton of time, effort, money, and operational risk to replace because those language runtimes just cost too much to operate at scale. I would probably reach for Java (or ideally Scala) for that sort of thing these days, but would love it if something like Rust could compete in that space. Maybe it can't, but I wish it could. I think one place where Rust could be great for these sorts of things is low-horsepower devices like routers and managed switches where you want to have a rich web interface but can't afford the overhead of an interpreted language. Being able to ship a device with a slower CPU or less RAM/storage because its web UI requires fewer resources would be an advantage in a market that's already very price-competitive. Just to disclose my biases: I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't ever be writing anything in a dynamically-typed language if you expect it to turn into a large program. Your initial development will indeed be rapid, but later on you'll be spending more time writing tests than improving your software... or you won't be writing tests and will be too afraid to make large changes without breaking something.
- cutler 6y ago
  I can't imagine messing with pointers and ending up with something anywhere near as productive as Rails. Rust and Ruby target completely different domains.
BuckRogers 6y ago
As a C# dev, ASP.NET MVC mostly, I’ve always been curious about Rails, why would you say someone move from where I am now to RoR?
- petepete 6y ago
  Rails' main strength is that the framework itself provides really good sensible defaults and organises itself (config, environments, routes, models, controllers, helpers, tests) in an easily-extendable manner. I can usually familiarise myself with an app in a matter of minutes and can get a working prototype up and running within an hour. All this makes me really productive, and writing Ruby is a joy.

Alupis 6y ago

I could be mistaken, but don't Rust and Ruby target completely different types of problems? Last I had heard, Rust was targeted at being a "Systems" language, ie. an alternative to ASM/C/C++, where Ruby is basically a webserver/backend language. What makes you think Rust will be used as a "Ruby on Rails" replacement anytime soon?

kelnos 6y ago
Crates like actix-web, rocket, and warp do target web application development. They're certainly not Rails replacements yet (and maybe don't aim to be), but it's not unreasonable to expect a Ruby developer who has learned and likes Rust to do some web backend development using Rust.
- afavour 6y ago
  Having done some Rust development myself... I love the language, but if I was tackling a problem that could be solved with something like Rails, I'd use Rails. Rust is awesome for performance critical stuff but there's a lot of memory management overhead for a CRUD app.
- rapsey 6y ago
  I've been writing Rust full time for years. Rust will never ever be as easy and productive as Ruby.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Never claimed it would be. But I've been bitten enough professionally with services written in Python and Ruby eventually costing the company a ton of time, effort, money, and operational risk to replace because those language runtimes just cost too much to operate at scale. I would probably reach for Java (or ideally Scala) for that sort of thing these days, but would love it if something like Rust could compete in that space. Maybe it can't, but I wish it could. I think one place where Rust could be great for these sorts of things is low-horsepower devices like routers and managed switches where you want to have a rich web interface but can't afford the overhead of an interpreted language. Being able to ship a device with a slower CPU or less RAM/storage because its web UI requires fewer resources would be an advantage in a market that's already very price-competitive. Just to disclose my biases: I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't ever be writing anything in a dynamically-typed language if you expect it to turn into a large program. Your initial development will indeed be rapid, but later on you'll be spending more time writing tests than improving your software... or you won't be writing tests and will be too afraid to make large changes without breaking something.
cutler 6y ago
I can't imagine messing with pointers and ending up with something anywhere near as productive as Rails. Rust and Ruby target completely different domains.

BuckRogers 6y ago

As a C# dev, ASP.NET MVC mostly, I’ve always been curious about Rails, why would you say someone move from where I am now to RoR?

petepete 6y ago
Rails' main strength is that the framework itself provides really good sensible defaults and organises itself (config, environments, routes, models, controllers, helpers, tests) in an easily-extendable manner. I can usually familiarise myself with an app in a matter of minutes and can get a working prototype up and running within an hour. All this makes me really productive, and writing Ruby is a joy.