4 ms·

> Why does it continue to struggle in this way when more recent languages like Go are booming? It doesn't struggle. It's just not the hot new kid on the block

by joshmn 3y ago

> Why does it continue to struggle in this way when more recent languages like Go are booming? It doesn't struggle. It's just not the hot new kid on the block anymore. It's a 2013 Toyota when the rest of the world is all about EVs. Rails is, as an ecosystem, not lacking much. There's not much room for innovation. It's mature, it's stable, it's scaleable. Personally, I value my sanity, so I stick with an older Toyota. I don't need panel gaps and batteries exploding. I just wanna build stuff.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zamalek 3y ago
> it's scaleable. That is debatable. Both GitHub and Hackyderm are large-scale Rails deployments, and both share a DevOps engineer (Nóva) who I've heard complaining about Ruby DevOps at least once. Twitter was forced to abandon Rails (being the poster child for Rails at the time).
- holman 3y ago
  Ruby was never really the issue at GitHub; there were plenty of other concerns that ranked much higher on the list. Ultimately it scaled well.
- gls2ro 3y ago
  (first, I am biased as I have worked with Ruby since 2007 and still enjoying it) This is not a reply to you, but I decided a long time ago that I will not let this argument about scalability remain with response. If you have already decided not to try Ruby on Rails or any Ruby framework, say so. It is ok to have different preferences. But this thing with Ruby needs to be more scalable is a very weak argument. Here is why: In the tech industry, it is not uncommon to come across companies that opt to rewrite their tech stack in a different language, often citing scalability as a reason. While this argument holds some merit, it's worth noting that scalability is a complex issue that affects all web frameworks, not just Ruby on Rails. Therefore, criticizing Ruby on Rails solely based on scalability may not be a strong argument when you take into consideration the idea that there are very big companies build with it. - Ruby on Rails is scalable for 99.999% of all startups created with it. This 99.999% will die for any other reason but not because of their tech stack. Again the same can be said about any other web framework. Of course the 99.999% is just a made up number based on the fact that there are so few companies failing because of their tech stack scalability. - Twitter and Github are maybe in the top 0.0001% of web apps when thinking about scale or usage. Hope you (the reader of this comment) will create a startup that will be so successful in terms of scale. But the chances are that with 99.999% confidence, you are not them, and the chances to create a product that will be like them are slim. - The problems at scale are not only technological but also organizational. Now open this list https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies and this list https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/public https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/public and try to check how many of them are using Ruby. There are quite a few in this top. It scales or else there should not be any big company using Ruby there.
  - tredre3 3y ago
    > Ruby on Rails is scalable for 99.999% of all startups created with it. You are right of course, but not for your stated reasons. Essentially RoR doesn't scale. RoR scalability is a meme, anything else scales much better. From node to PHP, they all can do much more on much less hardware. To achieve hyperscale with RoR you have to throw absurd hardware with layers upon layers of load balancers in front of it. But I'd argue that it doesn't matter at all for a startup. Like you said most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing. But they all benefit quite dearly from the excellent developer velocity provided by RoR.
    - zamalek 3y ago
      Right, but I do believe that it is important to choose something that scales competently: > most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing I considered covering this argument in my gp comment. What if your startup does grow to the scale where it becomes an issue? Do you suspend new user signups until you can do the rewrite? Or do you just let things keep spiraling, like GitHub? Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite).
      - gls2ro 3y ago
        I agree about making an informed choice. I disagree with: > Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite). How can this be true when we know that Shopify, Gitlab, Github and all others are using RoR. Here is a more concrete scale[1]: > We served 75.98 Million requests per minute to our commerce platform at peak. That’s 1.27 Million requests per second! Is that a bit enough limit for you? Here is more: > We achieved 99.999+% uptime while averaging 3 Terabytes per minute of egress traffic across our infrastructure [2] [1] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 [2] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720
- cellularmitosis 3y ago
  I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted. The first Rails entry in the Techempower benchmarks achieves 1.6% the throughput of the fastest option. https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r21 https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r21
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    The slowness is definitely a problem and it uses a lot of memory. I'm not sure, the term "scalable" is right though. It's slow at any scale, but AFAIK doesn't get much less efficient or develop other problems as it scales. Sure, you can write your app in a way where it doesn't scale, but there is nothing in Rails that makes that inherent.
- pelasaco 3y ago
  It is not debatable. Github does it, lot of companies deploy ruby on rails daily. Github has a huge codebase, and still rocks. Back in 2008, there weren't any better option, to be honest. I'm quite sure if github was written in go, it would be a nightmare too, specially from devops point of view. https://github.blog/2023-04-06-building-github-with-ruby-and-rails/ https://github.blog/2023-04-06-building-github-with-ruby-and...
pelasaco 3y ago
To write web app in golang and write mostly SQL by hand isn't that cool. Yes sometimes it is important, sometimes you should. But ActiveRecord is just a dream, that quite often people even forget how hard was the life before it.
- stanislavb 3y ago
  Well, personally, I remember how good ActiveRecord is every time I dip my toes in something different from Rails :)
  - pelasaco 3y ago
    Using `merge` on two queries still blows my mind. Ruby is so awesome that there is still another great ORM: Sequel :)

by joshmn 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zamalek 3y ago

> it's scaleable. That is debatable. Both GitHub and Hackyderm are large-scale Rails deployments, and both share a DevOps engineer (Nóva) who I've heard complaining about Ruby DevOps at least once. Twitter was forced to abandon Rails (being the poster child for Rails at the time).

holman 3y ago
Ruby was never really the issue at GitHub; there were plenty of other concerns that ranked much higher on the list. Ultimately it scaled well.
gls2ro 3y ago
(first, I am biased as I have worked with Ruby since 2007 and still enjoying it) This is not a reply to you, but I decided a long time ago that I will not let this argument about scalability remain with response. If you have already decided not to try Ruby on Rails or any Ruby framework, say so. It is ok to have different preferences. But this thing with Ruby needs to be more scalable is a very weak argument. Here is why: In the tech industry, it is not uncommon to come across companies that opt to rewrite their tech stack in a different language, often citing scalability as a reason. While this argument holds some merit, it's worth noting that scalability is a complex issue that affects all web frameworks, not just Ruby on Rails. Therefore, criticizing Ruby on Rails solely based on scalability may not be a strong argument when you take into consideration the idea that there are very big companies build with it. - Ruby on Rails is scalable for 99.999% of all startups created with it. This 99.999% will die for any other reason but not because of their tech stack. Again the same can be said about any other web framework. Of course the 99.999% is just a made up number based on the fact that there are so few companies failing because of their tech stack scalability. - Twitter and Github are maybe in the top 0.0001% of web apps when thinking about scale or usage. Hope you (the reader of this comment) will create a startup that will be so successful in terms of scale. But the chances are that with 99.999% confidence, you are not them, and the chances to create a product that will be like them are slim. - The problems at scale are not only technological but also organizational. Now open this list https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies and this list https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/public https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/public and try to check how many of them are using Ruby. There are quite a few in this top. It scales or else there should not be any big company using Ruby there.
- tredre3 3y ago
  > Ruby on Rails is scalable for 99.999% of all startups created with it. You are right of course, but not for your stated reasons. Essentially RoR doesn't scale. RoR scalability is a meme, anything else scales much better. From node to PHP, they all can do much more on much less hardware. To achieve hyperscale with RoR you have to throw absurd hardware with layers upon layers of load balancers in front of it. But I'd argue that it doesn't matter at all for a startup. Like you said most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing. But they all benefit quite dearly from the excellent developer velocity provided by RoR.
  - zamalek 3y ago
    Right, but I do believe that it is important to choose something that scales competently: > most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing I considered covering this argument in my gp comment. What if your startup does grow to the scale where it becomes an issue? Do you suspend new user signups until you can do the rewrite? Or do you just let things keep spiraling, like GitHub? Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite).
    - gls2ro 3y ago
      I agree about making an informed choice. I disagree with: > Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite). How can this be true when we know that Shopify, Gitlab, Github and all others are using RoR. Here is a more concrete scale[1]: > We served 75.98 Million requests per minute to our commerce platform at peak. That’s 1.27 Million requests per second! Is that a bit enough limit for you? Here is more: > We achieved 99.999+% uptime while averaging 3 Terabytes per minute of egress traffic across our infrastructure [2] [1] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 [2] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720
cellularmitosis 3y ago
I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted. The first Rails entry in the Techempower benchmarks achieves 1.6% the throughput of the fastest option. https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r21 https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r21
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  The slowness is definitely a problem and it uses a lot of memory. I'm not sure, the term "scalable" is right though. It's slow at any scale, but AFAIK doesn't get much less efficient or develop other problems as it scales. Sure, you can write your app in a way where it doesn't scale, but there is nothing in Rails that makes that inherent.
pelasaco 3y ago
It is not debatable. Github does it, lot of companies deploy ruby on rails daily. Github has a huge codebase, and still rocks. Back in 2008, there weren't any better option, to be honest. I'm quite sure if github was written in go, it would be a nightmare too, specially from devops point of view. https://github.blog/2023-04-06-building-github-with-ruby-and-rails/ https://github.blog/2023-04-06-building-github-with-ruby-and...

pelasaco 3y ago

To write web app in golang and write mostly SQL by hand isn't that cool. Yes sometimes it is important, sometimes you should. But ActiveRecord is just a dream, that quite often people even forget how hard was the life before it.

stanislavb 3y ago
Well, personally, I remember how good ActiveRecord is every time I dip my toes in something different from Rails :)
- pelasaco 3y ago
  Using `merge` on two queries still blows my mind. Ruby is so awesome that there is still another great ORM: Sequel :)