4 ms·

Rails won't die because Ruby is nice to build with and Javascript is a sadistic nightmare. I don't use it myself but I absolutely see the appeal. What more mode

Rails won't die because Ruby is nice to build with and Javascript is a sadistic nightmare. I don't use it myself but I absolutely see the appeal. What more modern alternatives even attempt to compete on DX?

arrowsmith 2y ago
Phoenix, and it's not even close. I'm never going back to Rails.
arnvald 2y ago
I agree, I’ve been working with other languages and frameworks and in my opinion nothing comes close. People often mention Laravel as comparable or even superior, but having worked with it for a year I struggled a lot with how messed up PHP is (even with all the improvements done over the years.) JavaScript doesn’t have anything comparable either, although I haven’t worked much with NextJS with server-side rendering, maybe this brings it closer to DX of Rails
- vr46 2y ago
  I worked on a Laravel/Next.js project last year and couldn’t believe how much stuff you didn’t get for free, from debugging PHP to building the assets. Rails JS build support is confusing and messy, but seems to be under control now, and is as much a fault of the JS ecosystem/hellscape as the maintainers. Turbo seems a bit uncertain too. But on the whole, it is ridiculously easy to get stuff done. Things I would like addressed better: * Authentication and Authorization Actually, that’s it.
  - imjonse 2y ago
    auth generators are being done for 8.0
lknuth 2y ago
Elixir and Phoenix/Ecto is much superior to Rails IMO. My main gripe with Rails are conventions everywhere which aren't documented clearly. You just have to know them/learn them over time/from guides. It makes refactoring really hard, too.
- rapsey 2y ago
  Everything is superior to js, but js has the most important factor of low barrier of entry.
  - appendix-rock 2y ago
    There are other languages in use that are inferior to modern-day JS. JS is far from perfect but it’s also carrying cultural baggage. People that bash JS and proceed to sing the praises of Perl are just…well, at this case it’s clear that this is more of a culture war than anything else.
  - nsonha 2y ago
    that's nonsense Ruby, Python and JS are all at about the same level of difficulty, most of the semantic is the same. If anything, the messiness of the language and ecosystem is the higher barrier of entry (Python and JS). JS is popular because it has the monopoly on web browser runtime. Python is more of a direct competitor to Ruby and its success is indeed due to low barrier of entry. Non-professionals, including data scientists, picked it up and the rest become history. And not everything has to be logical, PHP for example is just a shit language, not easy, nor powerful in any metric, just happened to be there at the dotcom boom.
    - arrowsmith 2y ago
      > Ruby, Python and JS are all at about the same level of difficulty Hard disagree. Whenever I have to write JS I'm always amazed at how much boilerplate is required to do things that are extremely basic in Ruby or Python (and I don't like Python at all, but that's another matter.) E.g. in JS I have to install a utility library like Lodash to get basic iteration functions that in Ruby and Python are part of the standard library.
      - nsonha 2y ago
        If anything that's the opposite of the point GP was making (low barrier to entry)
devjab 2y ago
I think JS can quite nice but it requires some rather tight control over how it’s used in your teams. If you don’t do that then it’ll be a nightmare, but that freedom doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t make it a fairly decent experience. I do think React has become a terrible framework to work on after their love relationship with Next which is… well just horrendously bad, especially if you don’t buy into the whole Vercel thing, but using that is still a choice you don’t have to make. With that said there is no doubt that things like RoR, various Python frameworks, Go + templates or Laravel are massive improvements. Especially for internal apps where things like HTMX coupled with templates lets you be extremely productive without scaring middle-managers who are afraid of page reloads. I know something like RoR, Laravel or Django aren’t hyped in tech communities, but in the “real” world where being productive matters a lot more than the underlying tech, which is where (as you point out) they continue to deliver great value. Meaning that they’ve got massive staying power. Being “old” typically also means they undergo much more reasonable changes than your average JavaScript framework where you sometimes might as well pick a completely different one on major updates.

arrowsmith 2y ago

Phoenix, and it's not even close. I'm never going back to Rails.

arnvald 2y ago

I agree, I’ve been working with other languages and frameworks and in my opinion nothing comes close. People often mention Laravel as comparable or even superior, but having worked with it for a year I struggled a lot with how messed up PHP is (even with all the improvements done over the years.) JavaScript doesn’t have anything comparable either, although I haven’t worked much with NextJS with server-side rendering, maybe this brings it closer to DX of Rails

vr46 2y ago
I worked on a Laravel/Next.js project last year and couldn’t believe how much stuff you didn’t get for free, from debugging PHP to building the assets. Rails JS build support is confusing and messy, but seems to be under control now, and is as much a fault of the JS ecosystem/hellscape as the maintainers. Turbo seems a bit uncertain too. But on the whole, it is ridiculously easy to get stuff done. Things I would like addressed better: * Authentication and Authorization Actually, that’s it.
- imjonse 2y ago
  auth generators are being done for 8.0

lknuth 2y ago

Elixir and Phoenix/Ecto is much superior to Rails IMO. My main gripe with Rails are conventions everywhere which aren't documented clearly. You just have to know them/learn them over time/from guides. It makes refactoring really hard, too.

rapsey 2y ago
Everything is superior to js, but js has the most important factor of low barrier of entry.
- appendix-rock 2y ago
  There are other languages in use that are inferior to modern-day JS. JS is far from perfect but it’s also carrying cultural baggage. People that bash JS and proceed to sing the praises of Perl are just…well, at this case it’s clear that this is more of a culture war than anything else.
- nsonha 2y ago
  that's nonsense Ruby, Python and JS are all at about the same level of difficulty, most of the semantic is the same. If anything, the messiness of the language and ecosystem is the higher barrier of entry (Python and JS). JS is popular because it has the monopoly on web browser runtime. Python is more of a direct competitor to Ruby and its success is indeed due to low barrier of entry. Non-professionals, including data scientists, picked it up and the rest become history. And not everything has to be logical, PHP for example is just a shit language, not easy, nor powerful in any metric, just happened to be there at the dotcom boom.
  - arrowsmith 2y ago
    > Ruby, Python and JS are all at about the same level of difficulty Hard disagree. Whenever I have to write JS I'm always amazed at how much boilerplate is required to do things that are extremely basic in Ruby or Python (and I don't like Python at all, but that's another matter.) E.g. in JS I have to install a utility library like Lodash to get basic iteration functions that in Ruby and Python are part of the standard library.
    - nsonha 2y ago
      If anything that's the opposite of the point GP was making (low barrier to entry)

devjab 2y ago

I think JS can quite nice but it requires some rather tight control over how it’s used in your teams. If you don’t do that then it’ll be a nightmare, but that freedom doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t make it a fairly decent experience. I do think React has become a terrible framework to work on after their love relationship with Next which is… well just horrendously bad, especially if you don’t buy into the whole Vercel thing, but using that is still a choice you don’t have to make. With that said there is no doubt that things like RoR, various Python frameworks, Go + templates or Laravel are massive improvements. Especially for internal apps where things like HTMX coupled with templates lets you be extremely productive without scaring middle-managers who are afraid of page reloads. I know something like RoR, Laravel or Django aren’t hyped in tech communities, but in the “real” world where being productive matters a lot more than the underlying tech, which is where (as you point out) they continue to deliver great value. Meaning that they’ve got massive staying power. Being “old” typically also means they undergo much more reasonable changes than your average JavaScript framework where you sometimes might as well pick a completely different one on major updates.