5 ms·

Is Rails really a thing of the past or are people just not talking / posting about it much?

dacur 5y ago
As a Rails dev, based on the number of LI messages and emails I'm getting these days, I can tell you Rails is absolutely NOT a thing of the past.
- nobleach 5y ago
  I'm seeing the very same. Because I had some Rails experience in the 2.3/3.x days, I get recruiters constantly bombarding me to come work with their Rails monoliths. The few companies that I've actually spoken with are all trying to get AWAY from those massive Rails apps. They're moving to Elixir "microservices". My read on this is that many of these apps were begun as PoCs/MVPs and as the original engineers have tried to scale, they've lost interest. So we have a large amount of 5-10 year old code bases that are looking for maintainers. One friend in particular contacted me and asked if I knew anyone who'd be willing to contract with his firm to upgrade a Rails 5.x app. This tells me, they had no one on staff that could do so. So yes, the need for Rails devs is large. The popularity of it? At least in my area... not so much.
  - LanceH 5y ago
    All those successful efforts with Rails over the last ten years -- many are moving on to other tech, many are just getting bigger with Rails. I thought I had moved away from Rails into Go (I find the two very complementary), but I got pulled back into some solid, meaningful projects using Rails. People complain about the tech, but I would rather have a bad tech stack on a product/app with a chance than the perfect tech stack making the next twitter for dogs.
petepete 5y ago
The latter. Rails isn't cool but you see it used in so many places. I'm currently contracting with a UK Government dept and Rails is one of the two approved stacks, it's used on basically all externally facing projects.
johntdaly 5y ago
It’s established, so it is “boring” now and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I do get the feeling that Rails is becoming “more popular” again but not in the way you would expect. Some of the old Rails guys that moved on are getting nostalgic (me and one of my friends for example) and some guys that tried a few web frameworks are giving Rails a chance now that it isn’t the “hipster” tech it once used to be. P.s.: Just take a look at how this article is exploding (also most of the other Rails articles on Hacker News lately). They don’t just explode in popularity and comments but every single one of them has given me ridiculous amounts of karma. I would say that is a heavy indicator of a Rails popularity bounce-back, vocal AND silent.
Mikeb85 5y ago
It's just not trendy anymore. It's still used.
tomc1985 5y ago
Rails dev for 10 years here, we're still around and the jobs are still plenty
javajosh 5y ago
Rails is in the same state as Java - it's still there, but people don't talk about it much.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  To be fair, Java has been evolving at a much more rapid pace over the past 5 years and has started to creep back into conversation. Pressure from Scala and Kotlin have been pushing it to evolve (for the better).
  - javajosh 5y ago
    Oh yes, and I was glad to see recent Java GC improvements get some press. Java's big win over Ruby and Python is that Java is fully specified such that anyone could write a new implementation and mechanically check if it is compatible. (AFAIK both Ruby and Python say "my implementation is the specification".) (JavaScript is a bit of an oddity since it has a formal language spec, but NOT a formal virtual machine spec.)
- greggh 5y ago
  People have been talking a lot about java this week :)
  - MadeThisToReply 5y ago
    What happened this week?
    - ericwood 5y ago
      A very serious Log4j vulnerability was disclosed: https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html
ebiester 5y ago
It's still productive. It's just not "cool" anymore. Further, some of the choices DHH and company have made have been the opposite of other communities: for example, rails omakase still doesn't default to a single page app, though it is supported. If I started a project today that was slated to be on the web, I'd pick one of two languages. If the least interesting part of the work was the code, and I didn't see significant places where I was worried about future performance in the business logic layer, I'd pick rails. (This is 95% of cases.) If I thought this system would have performance-critical components or would need to scale to thousands of programmers of varying skill, I'd pick java. (I have a soft spot in my heart for clojure and elixir, and there are some edge cases where I might pick those, and a java ecosystem would allow for clojure interop. For example, some problems lend themselves to functional thinking. And, of course, there are some problems where another language shines - I could see defaulting to another tool if necessary.)
unicornfinder 5y ago
No doubt it's very popular still - I see it used every day. Just most of the people using it are busy using it and it's not the new hotness that warrants constant new discussion.
jetpks 5y ago
It’s around and popular, but it doesn’t have zealots to suck all the oxygen out of the conversation. Look at the people in this comment section that are emotionally upset that the author didn’t prefer JS over ruby. They’re calling the author stupid, saying the author is bad at bootstrapping or just not using the right frameworks. People don’t seem to be emotionally connected to Rails in the same way.
- regularfry 5y ago
  They used to be at one point. Then the hype machine switched track. The thing that did it, from memory, was Twitter coming out and saying they'd switched away because they couldn't make it go fast enough. All of a sudden all the cool kids decided that execution speed was the only thing that mattered, and oh look, v8 can handle a tonne of connections without slowing down and the circus moved on.
tarellel 5y ago
Another rails dev (10 years) it’s not the bright shiny new toy it used to be. But it’s still used by many, the jobs are plenty (I get tons of recruiter calls), and experience in it tends to pay very well.
inopinatus 5y ago
I use it all the time, I’m just not interested in magpie debates.

As a Rails dev, based on the number of LI messages and emails I'm getting these days, I can tell you Rails is absolutely NOT a thing of the past.

nobleach 5y ago
I'm seeing the very same. Because I had some Rails experience in the 2.3/3.x days, I get recruiters constantly bombarding me to come work with their Rails monoliths. The few companies that I've actually spoken with are all trying to get AWAY from those massive Rails apps. They're moving to Elixir "microservices". My read on this is that many of these apps were begun as PoCs/MVPs and as the original engineers have tried to scale, they've lost interest. So we have a large amount of 5-10 year old code bases that are looking for maintainers. One friend in particular contacted me and asked if I knew anyone who'd be willing to contract with his firm to upgrade a Rails 5.x app. This tells me, they had no one on staff that could do so. So yes, the need for Rails devs is large. The popularity of it? At least in my area... not so much.
- LanceH 5y ago
  All those successful efforts with Rails over the last ten years -- many are moving on to other tech, many are just getting bigger with Rails. I thought I had moved away from Rails into Go (I find the two very complementary), but I got pulled back into some solid, meaningful projects using Rails. People complain about the tech, but I would rather have a bad tech stack on a product/app with a chance than the perfect tech stack making the next twitter for dogs.

petepete 5y ago

The latter. Rails isn't cool but you see it used in so many places. I'm currently contracting with a UK Government dept and Rails is one of the two approved stacks, it's used on basically all externally facing projects.

johntdaly 5y ago

It’s established, so it is “boring” now and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I do get the feeling that Rails is becoming “more popular” again but not in the way you would expect. Some of the old Rails guys that moved on are getting nostalgic (me and one of my friends for example) and some guys that tried a few web frameworks are giving Rails a chance now that it isn’t the “hipster” tech it once used to be. P.s.: Just take a look at how this article is exploding (also most of the other Rails articles on Hacker News lately). They don’t just explode in popularity and comments but every single one of them has given me ridiculous amounts of karma. I would say that is a heavy indicator of a Rails popularity bounce-back, vocal AND silent.

Mikeb85 5y ago

It's just not trendy anymore. It's still used.

tomc1985 5y ago

Rails dev for 10 years here, we're still around and the jobs are still plenty

javajosh 5y ago

Rails is in the same state as Java - it's still there, but people don't talk about it much.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
To be fair, Java has been evolving at a much more rapid pace over the past 5 years and has started to creep back into conversation. Pressure from Scala and Kotlin have been pushing it to evolve (for the better).
- javajosh 5y ago
  Oh yes, and I was glad to see recent Java GC improvements get some press. Java's big win over Ruby and Python is that Java is fully specified such that anyone could write a new implementation and mechanically check if it is compatible. (AFAIK both Ruby and Python say "my implementation is the specification".) (JavaScript is a bit of an oddity since it has a formal language spec, but NOT a formal virtual machine spec.)
greggh 5y ago
People have been talking a lot about java this week :)
- MadeThisToReply 5y ago
  What happened this week?
  - ericwood 5y ago
    A very serious Log4j vulnerability was disclosed: https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/security.html

ebiester 5y ago

It's still productive. It's just not "cool" anymore. Further, some of the choices DHH and company have made have been the opposite of other communities: for example, rails omakase still doesn't default to a single page app, though it is supported. If I started a project today that was slated to be on the web, I'd pick one of two languages. If the least interesting part of the work was the code, and I didn't see significant places where I was worried about future performance in the business logic layer, I'd pick rails. (This is 95% of cases.) If I thought this system would have performance-critical components or would need to scale to thousands of programmers of varying skill, I'd pick java. (I have a soft spot in my heart for clojure and elixir, and there are some edge cases where I might pick those, and a java ecosystem would allow for clojure interop. For example, some problems lend themselves to functional thinking. And, of course, there are some problems where another language shines - I could see defaulting to another tool if necessary.)

unicornfinder 5y ago

No doubt it's very popular still - I see it used every day. Just most of the people using it are busy using it and it's not the new hotness that warrants constant new discussion.

jetpks 5y ago

It’s around and popular, but it doesn’t have zealots to suck all the oxygen out of the conversation. Look at the people in this comment section that are emotionally upset that the author didn’t prefer JS over ruby. They’re calling the author stupid, saying the author is bad at bootstrapping or just not using the right frameworks. People don’t seem to be emotionally connected to Rails in the same way.

regularfry 5y ago
They used to be at one point. Then the hype machine switched track. The thing that did it, from memory, was Twitter coming out and saying they'd switched away because they couldn't make it go fast enough. All of a sudden all the cool kids decided that execution speed was the only thing that mattered, and oh look, v8 can handle a tonne of connections without slowing down and the circus moved on.

tarellel 5y ago

Another rails dev (10 years) it’s not the bright shiny new toy it used to be. But it’s still used by many, the jobs are plenty (I get tons of recruiter calls), and experience in it tends to pay very well.

inopinatus 5y ago

I use it all the time, I’m just not interested in magpie debates.