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Goodreads is an example of a Rails victim like yours. They customized the app on top of Rails, and it's been so bad that Goodreads is dead in the water and has

Goodreads is an example of a Rails victim like yours. They customized the app on top of Rails, and it's been so bad that Goodreads is dead in the water and has not received major tech updates despite Amazon throwing engineers at it. Ruby is a dangerous language to refactor, so often you're locked for a long time. See also: Every blog post about Rails upgrades ever (see also: Stockholm syndrome)

yxhuvud 3y ago
> despite amazon throwing engineers at it Yeah, that is one way of phrasing it. Another way to phrase it is that Amazon took it over, turned it into an ingestion funnel to their book store, and has done as little as possible after that.
- stevebmark 3y ago
  Don’t speculate. Listen to engineers who work there https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444
  - imperfectcats 3y ago
    That's rather ironic, because I read your comment you linked to, and it is pure speculation. The Goodreads dev said "the site was originally built as a giant pile of Rails spaghetti with views mixed with business logic and such and then a fuck ton of weird features built and left to sit there". I'm not sure why you think that is or ever was "the Rails way", but it seems more like the classic "move fast and break stuff" startup engineering than anything resembling rails to me.
gardenhedge 3y ago
It's just that amazon isn't that good. See the alexa app as another example
- steve1977 3y ago
  See pretty much everything Amazon. AWS, Kindle, you name it. Successful, yes. Technically good, oh no.
gls2ro 3y ago
Are you sure Goodreads did not received updates because of Rails? Here is a competitor build with Rails https://thestorygraph.com/ https://thestorygraph.com/ Seems kinda cool. So I think Rails is not the problem here.
- stevebmark 3y ago
  Yes. Goodreads received lots of updates, and they were slow and difficult because of Rails (and Ruby) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444

yxhuvud 3y ago

> despite amazon throwing engineers at it Yeah, that is one way of phrasing it. Another way to phrase it is that Amazon took it over, turned it into an ingestion funnel to their book store, and has done as little as possible after that.

stevebmark 3y ago
Don’t speculate. Listen to engineers who work there https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444
- imperfectcats 3y ago
  That's rather ironic, because I read your comment you linked to, and it is pure speculation. The Goodreads dev said "the site was originally built as a giant pile of Rails spaghetti with views mixed with business logic and such and then a fuck ton of weird features built and left to sit there". I'm not sure why you think that is or ever was "the Rails way", but it seems more like the classic "move fast and break stuff" startup engineering than anything resembling rails to me.

gardenhedge 3y ago

It's just that amazon isn't that good. See the alexa app as another example

steve1977 3y ago
See pretty much everything Amazon. AWS, Kindle, you name it. Successful, yes. Technically good, oh no.

gls2ro 3y ago

Are you sure Goodreads did not received updates because of Rails? Here is a competitor build with Rails https://thestorygraph.com/ https://thestorygraph.com/ Seems kinda cool. So I think Rails is not the problem here.

stevebmark 3y ago
Yes. Goodreads received lots of updates, and they were slow and difficult because of Rails (and Ruby) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36577444