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"My favorite part about node is that it isn't opinionated. It leaves the opinion to the community modules." Node is not opinionated because it is not a framewo

"My favorite part about node is that it isn't opinionated. It leaves the opinion to the community modules." Node is not opinionated because it is not a framework; it is a JavaScript environment built on V8 and some common libraries. It would be much more appropriate to compare Express* with Rails than Node with Rails. If you want to compare Node with something you'd be more correct comparing Node and its modules with Ruby and its gems. * Even though, from what I can see, Express has more in common with Sinatra than Rails...

malandrew 15y ago
Express is more like Sinatra. It's largely syntactic sugar and some powerful extra features beyond what node's http module offers. Express knows where its "opinion" ends and where it should make room for other modules with opinions of their own. There really are two opinions at play here. Opinions of how to do something and opinions of what to do. Express has opinions of how that differ from the http module (it even uses the http module to accomplish what it does). Express has a minor opinion on what it should be doing and extends the what beyond the http module, but that's largely where it ends. The problem with Rails is that it the domain of subjects it had an opinion on kept growing until it couldn't not have an opinion on stuff. CSS versus SASS? I love Sass and used it before Rails added it. Rails didn't need to have an opinion here. Coffeescript? Same thing. Maybe it is an unfair comparison because there's no equivalent to this much opinion about so many things in the Javascript world, except some Rails ports that people have made. And even they are seen by most as "Oh that's nice that you can get set up quickly in less than a day, but no thanks, I'd like to pick and choose what makes sense to me based on what I'm planning on building." Had we known better maybe we would have gone with Sinatra back when we started.
- grabastic 15y ago
  Fair points. Given what you've described I'd suggest you take just one more friendly unbiased look at Rails 3... and if after that it's still not your cup of tea then fair is fair. Maybe you won't choose to develop with it, but maybe you also won't choose bash it. It's pretty cool and I believe it was an attempt by Rails developers to address your very concerns. Most major components can now be easily swapped via Railties thanks to the decoupling efforts. http://edgeapi.rubyonrails.org/classes/Rails/Railtie.html http://edgeapi.rubyonrails.org/classes/Rails/Railtie.html
  - malandrew 15y ago
    Don't get me wrong. I really like Ruby, but I think Rails has become too all encompassing in places. The architecture, like railties look pretty cool, but policy of constantly embrace and extend just leads to bloat that gets in the way when you're doing something more exotic than straight server-side CRUD.

malandrew 15y ago

Express is more like Sinatra. It's largely syntactic sugar and some powerful extra features beyond what node's http module offers. Express knows where its "opinion" ends and where it should make room for other modules with opinions of their own. There really are two opinions at play here. Opinions of how to do something and opinions of what to do. Express has opinions of how that differ from the http module (it even uses the http module to accomplish what it does). Express has a minor opinion on what it should be doing and extends the what beyond the http module, but that's largely where it ends. The problem with Rails is that it the domain of subjects it had an opinion on kept growing until it couldn't not have an opinion on stuff. CSS versus SASS? I love Sass and used it before Rails added it. Rails didn't need to have an opinion here. Coffeescript? Same thing. Maybe it is an unfair comparison because there's no equivalent to this much opinion about so many things in the Javascript world, except some Rails ports that people have made. And even they are seen by most as "Oh that's nice that you can get set up quickly in less than a day, but no thanks, I'd like to pick and choose what makes sense to me based on what I'm planning on building." Had we known better maybe we would have gone with Sinatra back when we started.

grabastic 15y ago
Fair points. Given what you've described I'd suggest you take just one more friendly unbiased look at Rails 3... and if after that it's still not your cup of tea then fair is fair. Maybe you won't choose to develop with it, but maybe you also won't choose bash it. It's pretty cool and I believe it was an attempt by Rails developers to address your very concerns. Most major components can now be easily swapped via Railties thanks to the decoupling efforts. http://edgeapi.rubyonrails.org/classes/Rails/Railtie.html http://edgeapi.rubyonrails.org/classes/Rails/Railtie.html
- malandrew 15y ago
  Don't get me wrong. I really like Ruby, but I think Rails has become too all encompassing in places. The architecture, like railties look pretty cool, but policy of constantly embrace and extend just leads to bloat that gets in the way when you're doing something more exotic than straight server-side CRUD.