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I used to write Rails professionally for many years This comparison isn't a good one. Rails is an all-encompasing framework. If you compare Rails to something

I used to write Rails professionally for many years This comparison isn't a good one. Rails is an all-encompasing framework. If you compare Rails to something like Nest.js, there's not much you're missing. Nest is one of the best application frameworks I've used in any language, and it comes with all this stuff you say JS doesn't have. --- EDIT: To clarify (because it is confusingly named), NestJS is a framework modeled after Spring Boot for TypeScript + Node: https://nestjs.com/ https://nestjs.com/ Not to be confused with Next.js, which is a framework for building SSR React apps.

vdemedes 5y ago
I should've been more clearer. This post isn't comparing Rails to any framework out there. What I was trying to say is that Rails got a lot of things right and it's making me productive, because I don't have to make the same decisions over and over again when making a JS app. Rails made those decisions for me and the only thing left for me is to build my app. I myself like Next.js and Remix a lot, but they still leave you to spend time making basic decisions, like how to organize your project or how to implement background jobs. That's why I'd love to see more conventions and less configuration in the JS land.
- scoot 5y ago
  > I'd love to see more conventions and less configuration in the JS land. Which is what the parent post is saying NestJS offers. I'm not familiar with it, so can't comment on the veracity of that claim, but I think you might have missed their point, perhaps because they confusingly called it "Nest.js" which could be mistaken for "Next.js".
- Flankk 5y ago
  You could compare Red Delicious to Granny Smith and a programmer will come along and say it's an unrelated variety. The problem is even if you want to use a larger library/framework, there are over ten thousand to choose from. The JS ecosystem is built upon the Unix philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well." So there is a reason React is not a framework and that is not your fault. If you do not use a Rails copycat, you are left with many decisions for packages. Nobody has time for that so everyone just uses what is most popular. So the comparison is fair, it's just a comparison between philosophies.
subpixel 5y ago
I can't help but think it is a reflection of the JS ecosystem that I assumed you had misspelled Next.js
- WolfOliver 5y ago
  I guess Nest.js is actually right: https://nestjs.com/ https://nestjs.com/ A TypeScript framework like Rails is a framework for Ruby.
  - scoot 5y ago
    > I guess Nest.js is actually right Not quite. "NestJS" is actually right. :)
  - jondwillis 5y ago
    I'm lolling because their first code block next to a live preview shows "500 internal server error"
- gavinray 5y ago
  This is a good point, updated parent post
WolfOliver 5y ago
The point here is that you do not have to think about choices, there is a "rails way" for every problem. There is no such thing as "the node way". They are hundreds of ways, some of them are dead ends.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  > There is no such thing as "the node way". And thank fucking god for that. It turns out there's no such thing as "The one way" - it's a choice for a reason: It has consequences and trade-offs that are applicable to your goals. If it turns out your goals are a very simple crud app for a team of under 5 - Rails is probably a great choice. For most everything else, you should probably understand why Rails made the choices they did, and what the trade-offs are. (ex: I would argue that the author is making a HUGE mistake by not just immediately outsourcing auth to something like a self-hosted Keycloak instance, or Okta/Auth0 - but my needs require enterprise auth support (SAML, OIDC, Provider support, etc) and maybe his don't) But the thing is... there are TONS of simple CRUD app frameworks out there. Rails is a good one, but so is NestJS, or ASP.net Core. There's at least one "Opinionated" CRUD framework for almost every language. Rails is still good, but I find it has a distinct "ASP.net classic" feel to it now - Too many versions, too much change, too many contradicting "opinions" between major versions.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    > And thank fucking god for that. It turns out there's no such thing as "The one way" - it's a choice for a reason: It has consequences and trade-offs that are applicable to your goals. That comes with a downside though, which is that for any given problem there won’t necessarily be an ultra-well-supported “happy path” where every conceivable problem has long been documented along with a solution. To me the lack of happy paths can be a problem. It’s something that is often encountered with Android development because Google can’t make up its mind and it’s very frustrating — usually your choices are between 5 different APIs that suck in different ways, meaning you have to pick the one that sucks in a way you think you can deal with best. It’s a significant damper on both velocity and motivation.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I think the main Thing here is that Rails is the de facto standard, the 'golden hammer' of Ruby based apps, and there is no space - or developers - for alternatives. The JS ecosystem as we know it today started years after Rails (Rails was 2004, Node's oldest version on their releases page is from 2011), and only really took off after NodeJS came to prominence with frameworks like BackboneJS, Angular, then React and the rest in the early 2010's, and it went along with Github and the emergence of everyone and their dog building libraries and frameworks. The attitude was different; instead of big opinionated but inflexible frameworks, people wanted to pick and choose. This was exacerbated by React that emphasized NOT being a framework but just a rendering layer. Pick ANY one-size-fits-all framework in the JS space and you will see "bad" decisions that people don't like. The closest thing to a full JS framework at the moment is probably Angular, which feels bloated and overly complicated (annotations, component / folder structure / file naming) or Express (stringly typed? I haven't looked at it in forever).
- vidarh 5y ago
  When I develop web apps for Ruby, I use Sinatra or pick and choose parts of Padrino. There's a dozen other alternatives to Rails. There's plenty of space.for alternatives. But Rails is good enough for those who are happy with a hammer, and so it's what gets talked about the most.
- usrusr 5y ago
  The dominance of Rails for its use case within the field of Ruby is is only one half of the equation. The other half is that Ruby has mostly collapsed into Rails, there's not much Ruby happening outside of Rails. This could never happen with a js framework of similarly scope, because all the other js use cases won't go away. One example of such a thing that won't go away is doing client-side stuff in the scope of a Rails protect. JS would have to lose a lot before it could achieve similar focus.
  - omarhaneef 5y ago
    I think this is "the" correct analysis. Rails has a clear one way to do things because there are no/few other options because everything else has withered away. To put this another way: to have a convention in JS, just pick a convention, and now at least you have a convention, even if everyone else has their own.
rwoerz 5y ago
Arrghh... This week was the first in years where I didn't FOMO. And here comes Nest.js. I desperately need an ad blocker though for shiny new tech thingies.
- eitland 5y ago
  Well, adding 0.0.0.0 news.ycombinator.com lobste.rs dev.to to your hosts file would go a long way but I am not sure I would recommend it. I've decided to not do it.
dmcgee 5y ago
Interesting, why is Nestjs used by so many online casinos? Is that random or is there some specific feature or approach used that is particularly valuable for that use case?
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Online casinos have usually been very aggressively sponsoring anything and anyone willing to take their money (and the usual reputation hit that can come with the perceived shadiness of gambling). That's especially true for newcomers who just burn as much money as they can, trying to establish a foothold. I'd say, being on the front page of a popular, credible project like that is probably sought after, hence the unusual amount of casino sponsorships

vdemedes 5y ago

I should've been more clearer. This post isn't comparing Rails to any framework out there. What I was trying to say is that Rails got a lot of things right and it's making me productive, because I don't have to make the same decisions over and over again when making a JS app. Rails made those decisions for me and the only thing left for me is to build my app. I myself like Next.js and Remix a lot, but they still leave you to spend time making basic decisions, like how to organize your project or how to implement background jobs. That's why I'd love to see more conventions and less configuration in the JS land.

scoot 5y ago
> I'd love to see more conventions and less configuration in the JS land. Which is what the parent post is saying NestJS offers. I'm not familiar with it, so can't comment on the veracity of that claim, but I think you might have missed their point, perhaps because they confusingly called it "Nest.js" which could be mistaken for "Next.js".
Flankk 5y ago
You could compare Red Delicious to Granny Smith and a programmer will come along and say it's an unrelated variety. The problem is even if you want to use a larger library/framework, there are over ten thousand to choose from. The JS ecosystem is built upon the Unix philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well." So there is a reason React is not a framework and that is not your fault. If you do not use a Rails copycat, you are left with many decisions for packages. Nobody has time for that so everyone just uses what is most popular. So the comparison is fair, it's just a comparison between philosophies.

subpixel 5y ago

I can't help but think it is a reflection of the JS ecosystem that I assumed you had misspelled Next.js

WolfOliver 5y ago
I guess Nest.js is actually right: https://nestjs.com/ https://nestjs.com/ A TypeScript framework like Rails is a framework for Ruby.
- scoot 5y ago
  > I guess Nest.js is actually right Not quite. "NestJS" is actually right. :)
- jondwillis 5y ago
  I'm lolling because their first code block next to a live preview shows "500 internal server error"
gavinray 5y ago
This is a good point, updated parent post

WolfOliver 5y ago

The point here is that you do not have to think about choices, there is a "rails way" for every problem. There is no such thing as "the node way". They are hundreds of ways, some of them are dead ends.

horsawlarway 5y ago
> There is no such thing as "the node way". And thank fucking god for that. It turns out there's no such thing as "The one way" - it's a choice for a reason: It has consequences and trade-offs that are applicable to your goals. If it turns out your goals are a very simple crud app for a team of under 5 - Rails is probably a great choice. For most everything else, you should probably understand why Rails made the choices they did, and what the trade-offs are. (ex: I would argue that the author is making a HUGE mistake by not just immediately outsourcing auth to something like a self-hosted Keycloak instance, or Okta/Auth0 - but my needs require enterprise auth support (SAML, OIDC, Provider support, etc) and maybe his don't) But the thing is... there are TONS of simple CRUD app frameworks out there. Rails is a good one, but so is NestJS, or ASP.net Core. There's at least one "Opinionated" CRUD framework for almost every language. Rails is still good, but I find it has a distinct "ASP.net classic" feel to it now - Too many versions, too much change, too many contradicting "opinions" between major versions.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  > And thank fucking god for that. It turns out there's no such thing as "The one way" - it's a choice for a reason: It has consequences and trade-offs that are applicable to your goals. That comes with a downside though, which is that for any given problem there won’t necessarily be an ultra-well-supported “happy path” where every conceivable problem has long been documented along with a solution. To me the lack of happy paths can be a problem. It’s something that is often encountered with Android development because Google can’t make up its mind and it’s very frustrating — usually your choices are between 5 different APIs that suck in different ways, meaning you have to pick the one that sucks in a way you think you can deal with best. It’s a significant damper on both velocity and motivation.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I think the main Thing here is that Rails is the de facto standard, the 'golden hammer' of Ruby based apps, and there is no space - or developers - for alternatives. The JS ecosystem as we know it today started years after Rails (Rails was 2004, Node's oldest version on their releases page is from 2011), and only really took off after NodeJS came to prominence with frameworks like BackboneJS, Angular, then React and the rest in the early 2010's, and it went along with Github and the emergence of everyone and their dog building libraries and frameworks. The attitude was different; instead of big opinionated but inflexible frameworks, people wanted to pick and choose. This was exacerbated by React that emphasized NOT being a framework but just a rendering layer. Pick ANY one-size-fits-all framework in the JS space and you will see "bad" decisions that people don't like. The closest thing to a full JS framework at the moment is probably Angular, which feels bloated and overly complicated (annotations, component / folder structure / file naming) or Express (stringly typed? I haven't looked at it in forever).

vidarh 5y ago
When I develop web apps for Ruby, I use Sinatra or pick and choose parts of Padrino. There's a dozen other alternatives to Rails. There's plenty of space.for alternatives. But Rails is good enough for those who are happy with a hammer, and so it's what gets talked about the most.
usrusr 5y ago
The dominance of Rails for its use case within the field of Ruby is is only one half of the equation. The other half is that Ruby has mostly collapsed into Rails, there's not much Ruby happening outside of Rails. This could never happen with a js framework of similarly scope, because all the other js use cases won't go away. One example of such a thing that won't go away is doing client-side stuff in the scope of a Rails protect. JS would have to lose a lot before it could achieve similar focus.
- omarhaneef 5y ago
  I think this is "the" correct analysis. Rails has a clear one way to do things because there are no/few other options because everything else has withered away. To put this another way: to have a convention in JS, just pick a convention, and now at least you have a convention, even if everyone else has their own.

rwoerz 5y ago

Arrghh... This week was the first in years where I didn't FOMO. And here comes Nest.js. I desperately need an ad blocker though for shiny new tech thingies.

eitland 5y ago
Well, adding 0.0.0.0 news.ycombinator.com lobste.rs dev.to to your hosts file would go a long way but I am not sure I would recommend it. I've decided to not do it.

dmcgee 5y ago

Interesting, why is Nestjs used by so many online casinos? Is that random or is there some specific feature or approach used that is particularly valuable for that use case?

mardifoufs 5y ago
Online casinos have usually been very aggressively sponsoring anything and anyone willing to take their money (and the usual reputation hit that can come with the perceived shadiness of gambling). That's especially true for newcomers who just burn as much money as they can, trying to establish a foothold. I'd say, being on the front page of a popular, credible project like that is probably sought after, hence the unusual amount of casino sponsorships