3 ms·

For me it actually boils down to the language. I hate almost everything about JavaScript, its syntax, the decisions made and steps taken in its development, and

For me it actually boils down to the language. I hate almost everything about JavaScript, its syntax, the decisions made and steps taken in its development, and writing Ruby, any Ruby, not just the Rails flavored kind, feels like a breath of fresh air after suffocating in the JS dungeon. My productivity takes a huge hit each time I have to work on a JS codebase, because my brain just doesn't enjoy thinking in JavaScript. (Yeah I know this post isn't terribly informative, but neither is the article, so I'm expecting some light-hearted posts)

tebbers 5y ago
For sure, the Ruby standard library is so much better than JS and Rails adds even more great helper methods on top of that.
jhgb 5y ago
> I hate almost everything about JavaScript, its syntax, the decisions made and steps taken in its development Well, one of them was done in ten days by a guy who liked Java and the other one was done in a few years by a guy who liked Smalltalk, so...
- regularfry 5y ago
  What he liked was Scheme, not Java. You can catch a whiff of it every now and then. He got told to give it a Java-like syntax by a PHB so they could ride on Sun's marketing coat-tails. And that's part of the problem: if what we'd started with was Java--, we might not have quite such a mess today.
qudat 5y ago
That's really interesting because I feel like ruby/rails is suffocating. There's virtually no static analysis tooling, it's difficult to find function/method definitions, and the language supports meta-programming to such a degree that things become too dynamic. I open a file and I feel completely lost.
- baja_blast 5y ago
  That's because half of Rails core functionality uses meta programing so methods are generated during run time. To effectively debug with Rails, you need to understand the inner workings of the framework itself.
chaostheory 5y ago
I feel the same way. Unfortunately, you can't escape Javascript. Typescript definitely dulls the pain a lot and I highly recommend it as an alternative.
RangerScience 5y ago
Try using a lot of curried functions in JS. Absolute game-changer for me. I didn't feel suffocated, just always lost and confused, when working in JS, until I started going a bit overboard with the curried functions.

tebbers 5y ago

For sure, the Ruby standard library is so much better than JS and Rails adds even more great helper methods on top of that.

jhgb 5y ago

> I hate almost everything about JavaScript, its syntax, the decisions made and steps taken in its development Well, one of them was done in ten days by a guy who liked Java and the other one was done in a few years by a guy who liked Smalltalk, so...

regularfry 5y ago
What he liked was Scheme, not Java. You can catch a whiff of it every now and then. He got told to give it a Java-like syntax by a PHB so they could ride on Sun's marketing coat-tails. And that's part of the problem: if what we'd started with was Java--, we might not have quite such a mess today.

qudat 5y ago

That's really interesting because I feel like ruby/rails is suffocating. There's virtually no static analysis tooling, it's difficult to find function/method definitions, and the language supports meta-programming to such a degree that things become too dynamic. I open a file and I feel completely lost.

baja_blast 5y ago
That's because half of Rails core functionality uses meta programing so methods are generated during run time. To effectively debug with Rails, you need to understand the inner workings of the framework itself.

chaostheory 5y ago

I feel the same way. Unfortunately, you can't escape Javascript. Typescript definitely dulls the pain a lot and I highly recommend it as an alternative.

RangerScience 5y ago

Try using a lot of curried functions in JS. Absolute game-changer for me. I didn't feel suffocated, just always lost and confused, when working in JS, until I started going a bit overboard with the curried functions.