6 ms·

Aside from Shopify and others from that era, what modern SaaS offerings are choosing Rails (or Ruby) for their main app? I had one last peer still using Rails,

by aliqot 4y ago

Aside from Shopify and others from that era, what modern SaaS offerings are choosing Rails (or Ruby) for their main app? I had one last peer still using Rails, and since Heroku's been on the ropes they're out. Other than DHH adherents, is anybody still excited about Rails? To draw an even smaller circle, is anybody still excited about Ruby when Rails isn't involved?

huimang 4y ago
“Other than DHH adherents, is anybody still excited about Rails? To draw an even smaller circle, is anybody still excited about Ruby when Rails isn't involved?” If people use a language/framework and don’t constantly talk about it online, does anyone even use that language/framework? The non-snarky answer is yes and yes. Source: me, who just attended Euruko, a Ruby conference. Rails is just mature, dependable, and boring, so there’s not as much to talk about compared to X-framework of the week/month.
hirundo 4y ago
If HN interest is a reasonable proxy, then judging by the number of Ruby stories that flow through here, yes.
pmontra 4y ago
A customer of mine develops a surprising number of web apps with Rails. REST APIs or full stack apps with Turbo/Hotwire/Stimulus whatever the name is. I've been working with them for six months and I saw and worked on at least five apps at different state of maintenence and delivery, including one started from scratch and completed in three months with a React front end. Maybe there are more productive frameworks but Rails is still a good way to make developers productive. Are they SaaS apps intended to be used by millions of people? No, maybe only in the thousands or tens of thousands but I think that not many SaaS are used daily by million of people. There are only 24 hours in a day.
brink 4y ago
I'm pivoting my career away from Rails after 10 years with it. Elixir and Phoenix fills the Rails void and does what Rails does better than Rails with usually better code at ~7x the speed. In my opinion - there's no reason to build a new app in Rails today aside from familiarity.
- scruple 4y ago
  FWIW, I started with 2.X back in 2007/2008 and I have decided that my current employer is my last role working in a Rails shop.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    What do you plan to focus on?
    - scruple 4y ago
      I started my career in embedded and I am strongly considering swinging back towards systems work.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  I'm curious what sort of "market" you are finding for paid elixir/phoenix work. Are you a freelancer/consultant?
vlunkr 4y ago
“Excited” is an interesting word. I still like Return of the Jedi, but I’m not excited about it because it’s old. The Ruby/Rails community is very mature, the language and the framework are flexible enough for anything, and there are libraries and guides for anything you want to do. So no, it’s not that exciting now, but it’s still widely used. From my own experience, my company continues to use it for many project because we have tons of our own library code that couldn’t easily be recreated.
USA-RedDragon 4y ago
Terraform Cloud's web UI and API are Ruby on Rails
ericb 4y ago
> is anybody still excited about Ruby when Rails isn't involved? Far more excited than I am about JS when the browser isn't involved. > what modern SaaS offerings are choosing Rails Github, Airbnb, Shopify, Constant Contact, SlideShare, CrunchBase, Bloomberg, Yammer, GitLab, ZenDesk, Hashicorp, Hulu, Netflix.
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  GitHub is actively transitioning away from Rails. Netflix is mostly Java / Node.js, they are not a significant Rails shop. Also, OP said "modern", probably to mean not companies that chose their tech stack a decade ago. New SaaS these days trend towards Next.js / Node (Supabase, Substack, Notion, Planetscale, Railway, Secureframe, Newfront, etc.), some Django, the occasional Rails or Phoenix.
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    Supabase wrote their backend in Elixir. AFIK, their offering started as essentially “various stuff common in Elixir systems, as a service for JS devs”. More here: https://thinkingelixir.com/podcast-episodes/073-elixir-at-supabase-with-paul-copplestone/ https://thinkingelixir.com/podcast-episodes/073-elixir-at-su...
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      Yes, some portion of their backend is Elixir/Phoenix: https://github.com/supabase/realtime https://github.com/supabase/realtime but most of their current stack and active development, frontend and backend, is Next.js, and not the Rails/Phoenix fullstack way: https://github.com/supabase/supabase https://github.com/supabase/supabase
      - kiwicopple 4y ago
        I just did a full write up on the Architecture becaase we have this question often: https://supabase.com/docs/architecture#architecture https://supabase.com/docs/architecture#architecture > most of their current stack and active development, frontend and backend, is Next.js This is only the Dashboard. We dogfood Supabase to build Supabase, so we use the tools in the doc above
kayodelycaon 4y ago
Been using Rails since 1.2. Still excited. Rails 7 + Hotwire + ESBuild = <3 Once I add bootstrap and simple_form, the amount of code I don't have to write in a Rails application is just incredible. And yes, I've used other things on and off my entire career. React is a love/hate relationship. Happy to punt it when working on a small project.
- igravious 4y ago
  I've been trying out Alpine instead of Vue/React/whatevs and I'm liking it. Also, I'm using Propshaft instead of Hotwire rails new --skip-hotwire -a propshaft
  - Alifatisk 4y ago
    Isn't propshaft and hotwire two separate things?
- igravious 4y ago
  I've been trying out Alpine† instead of Vue/React/whatevs and I'm liking it. Also, I'm using Propshaft couple with Importmap instead of Hotwire & Turborails and so on mkdir foo cd foo bundle init # edit Gemfile to set the Rails you want: main, edge, etc. bundle # plus whatever other options you normally choose when you run `new' bundle exec rails new --skip-hotwire -a propshaft . bundle install bundle binstubs bundler bin/bundle add importmap-rails bin/rails importmap:install bin/importmap pin @rails/ujs alpinejs bootstrap What's simple_form btw, am I missing out on something wonderful? † https://alpinejs.dev/ https://alpinejs.dev/
3pt14159 4y ago
I would have used Rails for the current project I'm on, but for one thing: Data science. In the past (around 2010 to about 2018) I did the web stuff in Rails and communicated through the database for the ML stuff I needed from Python, but even though Rails is better than Django, these days Django is good enough and it isn't worth the tooling and the employee dual lingual requirements to justify both. It sucks and I wish I could use Ruby more. I agree Ruby and Rails are both better than Python and Django on their own, but the scientific computing part of Python is just so phenomenal that there isn't really anything to do about it anymore other than to accept it. Ruby is like Elivish. It's poetic and beautiful and consistent where it counts, full of symbolism and grandeur, but in a world of dwarves, humans, and orcs it just isn't useful enough to justify making an entire team learn it.
sprkwd 4y ago
Me. I am. I like Ruby. It’s simple and easy to use.
Lio 4y ago
I still see a lot of Rails contract work out there, roughly as many roles as ever before. I've thought about switching to Elixir work but I just don't see the demand there yet. There's 2 orders of magnitude more Rails roles than there are Elixir jobs. That might change with time hopefully. I can only speak for myself but I think Rails 7 is the most exciting release for years. Hotwire, Stimulus, et al are finally a compelling reason to do frontend work in Rails again vs the last few years of using it mainly as an API for JavaScript SPA frameworks. Ruby 3 finally provides a decent solution for async IO (with fully parallel ractors a work in progress). Tooling is also much improved over a few years ago with Sorbet and Treesitter AST based stuff. Rails might be boring but boring gets the job done.
- vlz 4y ago
  Can only agree. Rails 7 with Hotwire, Turbo, Stimulus is very much a different experience than earlier versions. The fact that Rails is still evolving and changing in such big strides makes me think that it could stay relevant longer than people might think.
corytheboyd 4y ago
I use it all the time and just don't talk about it, because it's boring and does the job. Why? Because I know how it works, and can make functional things in minutes. It's my go to hammer when I need to build another stupid fucking website with a database. I don't care if it's "slow", I couldn't give less of a shit about the extra 12 cpu cycles every request needs, it is completely irrelevant because I'm not serving traffic to millions of concurrent users.
sparker72678 4y ago
> To draw an even smaller circle, is anybody still excited about Ruby when Rails isn't involved? I love Ruby, and I'm excited about where it is and where it's going. It's my go-to language for just about everything. I write automations with it, API clients with it, little just-for-me programs with it, little experiments with it. Ruby is a beautiful, delightful object oriented language and I wouldn't want to work with anything else right now (especially not Javascript).
- steve_gh 4y ago
  I discovered Ruby in 2001. It's been my go-to language ever since. I can write in other languages (mainly C, C++, Python and Haskell), and most certainly read a multitude of other languages, but Ruby just hits the spot.
Gigachad 4y ago
I think Rails still has a future in the same way C does. Not many are particularly excited about it and it's possibly not the right choice for new projects, but it has a very large existing app base that will continue for a long time. IMO the biggest issue is the fact Ruby is untyped. Things like updating Rails is an absolute nightmare.
loktarogar 4y ago
> Other than DHH adherents, is anybody still excited about Rails? I like Rails despite DHH. I'm a part of huge communities where people are still excited for Rails. It might not be the newest thing but I love working in Rails. Kind of depressive when, every time Ruby comes up here (it's still a lot, which should be a better indicator), this same topic comes up. Not because i'm tied to the language, but that the joy I am having isn't shared.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Same.

by aliqot 4y ago

huimang 4y ago

“Other than DHH adherents, is anybody still excited about Rails? To draw an even smaller circle, is anybody still excited about Ruby when Rails isn't involved?” If people use a language/framework and don’t constantly talk about it online, does anyone even use that language/framework? The non-snarky answer is yes and yes. Source: me, who just attended Euruko, a Ruby conference. Rails is just mature, dependable, and boring, so there’s not as much to talk about compared to X-framework of the week/month.

hirundo 4y ago

If HN interest is a reasonable proxy, then judging by the number of Ruby stories that flow through here, yes.

pmontra 4y ago

A customer of mine develops a surprising number of web apps with Rails. REST APIs or full stack apps with Turbo/Hotwire/Stimulus whatever the name is. I've been working with them for six months and I saw and worked on at least five apps at different state of maintenence and delivery, including one started from scratch and completed in three months with a React front end. Maybe there are more productive frameworks but Rails is still a good way to make developers productive. Are they SaaS apps intended to be used by millions of people? No, maybe only in the thousands or tens of thousands but I think that not many SaaS are used daily by million of people. There are only 24 hours in a day.

brink 4y ago

I'm pivoting my career away from Rails after 10 years with it. Elixir and Phoenix fills the Rails void and does what Rails does better than Rails with usually better code at ~7x the speed. In my opinion - there's no reason to build a new app in Rails today aside from familiarity.

scruple 4y ago
FWIW, I started with 2.X back in 2007/2008 and I have decided that my current employer is my last role working in a Rails shop.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  What do you plan to focus on?
  - scruple 4y ago
    I started my career in embedded and I am strongly considering swinging back towards systems work.
jrochkind1 4y ago
I'm curious what sort of "market" you are finding for paid elixir/phoenix work. Are you a freelancer/consultant?

vlunkr 4y ago

“Excited” is an interesting word. I still like Return of the Jedi, but I’m not excited about it because it’s old. The Ruby/Rails community is very mature, the language and the framework are flexible enough for anything, and there are libraries and guides for anything you want to do. So no, it’s not that exciting now, but it’s still widely used. From my own experience, my company continues to use it for many project because we have tons of our own library code that couldn’t easily be recreated.

USA-RedDragon 4y ago

Terraform Cloud's web UI and API are Ruby on Rails

ericb 4y ago

> is anybody still excited about Ruby when Rails isn't involved? Far more excited than I am about JS when the browser isn't involved. > what modern SaaS offerings are choosing Rails Github, Airbnb, Shopify, Constant Contact, SlideShare, CrunchBase, Bloomberg, Yammer, GitLab, ZenDesk, Hashicorp, Hulu, Netflix.

reducesuffering 4y ago
GitHub is actively transitioning away from Rails. Netflix is mostly Java / Node.js, they are not a significant Rails shop. Also, OP said "modern", probably to mean not companies that chose their tech stack a decade ago. New SaaS these days trend towards Next.js / Node (Supabase, Substack, Notion, Planetscale, Railway, Secureframe, Newfront, etc.), some Django, the occasional Rails or Phoenix.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  Supabase wrote their backend in Elixir. AFIK, their offering started as essentially “various stuff common in Elixir systems, as a service for JS devs”. More here: https://thinkingelixir.com/podcast-episodes/073-elixir-at-supabase-with-paul-copplestone/ https://thinkingelixir.com/podcast-episodes/073-elixir-at-su...
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    Yes, some portion of their backend is Elixir/Phoenix: https://github.com/supabase/realtime https://github.com/supabase/realtime but most of their current stack and active development, frontend and backend, is Next.js, and not the Rails/Phoenix fullstack way: https://github.com/supabase/supabase https://github.com/supabase/supabase
    - kiwicopple 4y ago
      I just did a full write up on the Architecture becaase we have this question often: https://supabase.com/docs/architecture#architecture https://supabase.com/docs/architecture#architecture > most of their current stack and active development, frontend and backend, is Next.js This is only the Dashboard. We dogfood Supabase to build Supabase, so we use the tools in the doc above

kayodelycaon 4y ago

Been using Rails since 1.2. Still excited. Rails 7 + Hotwire + ESBuild = <3 Once I add bootstrap and simple_form, the amount of code I don't have to write in a Rails application is just incredible. And yes, I've used other things on and off my entire career. React is a love/hate relationship. Happy to punt it when working on a small project.

igravious 4y ago
I've been trying out Alpine instead of Vue/React/whatevs and I'm liking it. Also, I'm using Propshaft instead of Hotwire rails new --skip-hotwire -a propshaft
- Alifatisk 4y ago
  Isn't propshaft and hotwire two separate things?
igravious 4y ago
I've been trying out Alpine† instead of Vue/React/whatevs and I'm liking it. Also, I'm using Propshaft couple with Importmap instead of Hotwire & Turborails and so on mkdir foo cd foo bundle init # edit Gemfile to set the Rails you want: main, edge, etc. bundle # plus whatever other options you normally choose when you run `new' bundle exec rails new --skip-hotwire -a propshaft . bundle install bundle binstubs bundler bin/bundle add importmap-rails bin/rails importmap:install bin/importmap pin @rails/ujs alpinejs bootstrap What's simple_form btw, am I missing out on something wonderful? † https://alpinejs.dev/ https://alpinejs.dev/

3pt14159 4y ago

I would have used Rails for the current project I'm on, but for one thing: Data science. In the past (around 2010 to about 2018) I did the web stuff in Rails and communicated through the database for the ML stuff I needed from Python, but even though Rails is better than Django, these days Django is good enough and it isn't worth the tooling and the employee dual lingual requirements to justify both. It sucks and I wish I could use Ruby more. I agree Ruby and Rails are both better than Python and Django on their own, but the scientific computing part of Python is just so phenomenal that there isn't really anything to do about it anymore other than to accept it. Ruby is like Elivish. It's poetic and beautiful and consistent where it counts, full of symbolism and grandeur, but in a world of dwarves, humans, and orcs it just isn't useful enough to justify making an entire team learn it.

sprkwd 4y ago

Me. I am. I like Ruby. It’s simple and easy to use.

Lio 4y ago

I still see a lot of Rails contract work out there, roughly as many roles as ever before. I've thought about switching to Elixir work but I just don't see the demand there yet. There's 2 orders of magnitude more Rails roles than there are Elixir jobs. That might change with time hopefully. I can only speak for myself but I think Rails 7 is the most exciting release for years. Hotwire, Stimulus, et al are finally a compelling reason to do frontend work in Rails again vs the last few years of using it mainly as an API for JavaScript SPA frameworks. Ruby 3 finally provides a decent solution for async IO (with fully parallel ractors a work in progress). Tooling is also much improved over a few years ago with Sorbet and Treesitter AST based stuff. Rails might be boring but boring gets the job done.

vlz 4y ago
Can only agree. Rails 7 with Hotwire, Turbo, Stimulus is very much a different experience than earlier versions. The fact that Rails is still evolving and changing in such big strides makes me think that it could stay relevant longer than people might think.

corytheboyd 4y ago

I use it all the time and just don't talk about it, because it's boring and does the job. Why? Because I know how it works, and can make functional things in minutes. It's my go to hammer when I need to build another stupid fucking website with a database. I don't care if it's "slow", I couldn't give less of a shit about the extra 12 cpu cycles every request needs, it is completely irrelevant because I'm not serving traffic to millions of concurrent users.

sparker72678 4y ago

> To draw an even smaller circle, is anybody still excited about Ruby when Rails isn't involved? I love Ruby, and I'm excited about where it is and where it's going. It's my go-to language for just about everything. I write automations with it, API clients with it, little just-for-me programs with it, little experiments with it. Ruby is a beautiful, delightful object oriented language and I wouldn't want to work with anything else right now (especially not Javascript).

steve_gh 4y ago
I discovered Ruby in 2001. It's been my go-to language ever since. I can write in other languages (mainly C, C++, Python and Haskell), and most certainly read a multitude of other languages, but Ruby just hits the spot.

Gigachad 4y ago

I think Rails still has a future in the same way C does. Not many are particularly excited about it and it's possibly not the right choice for new projects, but it has a very large existing app base that will continue for a long time. IMO the biggest issue is the fact Ruby is untyped. Things like updating Rails is an absolute nightmare.

loktarogar 4y ago

> Other than DHH adherents, is anybody still excited about Rails? I like Rails despite DHH. I'm a part of huge communities where people are still excited for Rails. It might not be the newest thing but I love working in Rails. Kind of depressive when, every time Ruby comes up here (it's still a lot, which should be a better indicator), this same topic comes up. Not because i'm tied to the language, but that the joy I am having isn't shared.

jrochkind1 4y ago
Same.