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You're looking at it in the wrong way. It's very easy to get started, but it's sort of "difficult" to get your head around how everything works, and where some

by relix 15y ago

You're looking at it in the wrong way. It's very easy to get started, but it's sort of "difficult" to get your head around how everything works, and where some of the "magic" comes from. If you don't want to understand it, you can be on your way in 5 minutes. If you have a problem, you have the option of learning how it works. For example your point about databases is moot: were it not for rails, you'd still have to figure out how databases work. Now it became optional. If you do run into problems and need to learn how databases work, then you're no worse off than if you would have written the queries yourself, because then you'd still have to learn how the database works. Most of the "compilation" of haml and erb and coffeescript is only once, after which it's cached and works just as fast as a static file. Still, there's some truth to the fact that it becomes a bit slower, but for most sites it's still well within bounds, and wouldn't be noticeable to the user unless you're running a 100 reqs per sec site.

jenius 15y ago
What you said in the first sentence of this reply was exactly my point - perhaps this didn't come across correctly in the post. I totally appreciate rails for how easy it makes things, and there's a reason that I chose it and continue to work with it. The problem that I am bringing up here is exactly what you pointed out in your second paragraph - you can get away with not understanding it, which is very tempting for beginners. If your two options are (1) get off and running immediately without deep understanding or (2) take a long time to understand things before you start -- for a beginner, this is often an easy decision. But in reality, it's important down the road to know what's going on behind the scenes, so you can be cruising along not knowing how things work, then when you run into a snag that you can't figure out, everything halts while you take an extended period of time to try to figure it out.

by relix 15y ago

jenius 15y ago

What you said in the first sentence of this reply was exactly my point - perhaps this didn't come across correctly in the post. I totally appreciate rails for how easy it makes things, and there's a reason that I chose it and continue to work with it. The problem that I am bringing up here is exactly what you pointed out in your second paragraph - you can get away with not understanding it, which is very tempting for beginners. If your two options are (1) get off and running immediately without deep understanding or (2) take a long time to understand things before you start -- for a beginner, this is often an easy decision. But in reality, it's important down the road to know what's going on behind the scenes, so you can be cruising along not knowing how things work, then when you run into a snag that you can't figure out, everything halts while you take an extended period of time to try to figure it out.