9 ms·

Rails is turning into a framework that includes everything, including the kitchen sink. Personally, I prefer to use the best tool for the job and node.js seems

by amix 14y ago

Rails is turning into a framework that includes everything, including the kitchen sink. Personally, I prefer to use the best tool for the job and node.js seems to be a much saner choice when doing realtime communication, since everything in node.js is non-blocking. There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby (or any other language that includes a lot of blocking libraries).

jherdman 14y ago
I think this is a bit of an overreaction given that Rails has always been a "batteries included" framework. The fact that Rails allows for socket-like behaviour now is not a tipping point, but simply a nice little feature that may prove useful to some. When Rails starts including a messaging stack, job server, and more, then I'd be right behind you in your complaint.
- adriand 14y ago
  > When Rails starts including a messaging stack, job server, and more, then I'd be right behind you in your complaint. Actually, Rails 4 does include a job queue: https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/adff4a706a5d7ad18ef05303461e1a0d848bd662 https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/adff4a706a5d7ad18ef053... However, I'm not complaining. ;)
  - FooBarWidget 14y ago
    Well to be more accurate: it includes a job queue API with the actual implementation being pluggable. It does not do job queuing by itself. It's just like the cache API, actual implementation depends on the cache store.
    - adriand 14y ago
      True, thanks for the correction. The person I responded to said "job server" and I'm not 100% clear on what that would cover - perhaps job queue API would fit that description, perhaps it wouldn't.
cageface 14y ago
I think the problem is that Rails was designed to solve the web problems of 2005 and a lot has changed since then. The shift to single-page, JS-driven applications and large numbers of dynamic updates requires a different set of design priorities and the performance characteristics of Ruby itself are more problematic in this environment. In many cases it makes more sense to use something like Go or Node or Erlang that was designed to handle these kinds of loads from the ground up.
- jcoder 14y ago
  "Shift"? I'd go for "emergence." The classic use cases are still alive and well.
- bascule 14y ago
  None of this is true. Single-page apps need great JSON APIs. Rails is awesome at making great JSON APIs. With Ember Data on the front end and ActiveModel::Serializers on the backend, you can completely free yourself from writing JSON serialization code. For websockets-based applications, check out Cramp. And note that as both Rails and Cramp are Rack-based, you can combine them. "Go or Node or Erlang" One of these things is not like the others...
  - malandrew 14y ago
    Rails works just fine for REST, but you've forgotten the other side of this and that is the part of the framework that handles the javascript assets, i.e. Sprockets. The difference between handling the single page app in Rails and node.js is night and day. Sprockets is a nightmare to deal with.
    - bascule 14y ago
      Nobody's forcing you to use Sprockets. You can use e.g. rake-pipeline instead
    - PetrolMan 14y ago
      Please explain. I've actually had a pretty good time dealing with Sprockets. There are the occasional deployment issues but the benefits tend to more than make up for any frustrations.
ZoFreX 14y ago
I'm actually quite excited about this, because I think it makes a lot of sense for this to be in Rails, for a couple of reasons. First of all, there aren't really any decent solutions for the problem in Ruby. There's a few projects with great potential, but nothing really mature - when I needed to do this, I went with cramp.in, which hasn't been updated in over 6 months now sadly. Node.js would unequivocally have been the better tool for the job, but I didn't want to learn Javascript or Node for this one-off. Secondly, even if there were mature Ruby equivalents to Node.js, or no impediment to me using Node, I can still see a lot of benefit to doing this in Rails. Personally I think it makes sense to be able to send events down to the clients and hook into the same models and business code you already have in place in the Rails app. (For certain use-cases, for example a project that's in Rails, is mostly a "regular" web app, but you want to give live updates for certain model changes, such as messages, ticket changes, new blog posts, whatever - obviously if the app is totally oriented around live functionality then node would probably be a smarter choice) (I apologise for using the term "Node.js" as if its another web framework, I know that's not entirely accurate but I don't know enough about it to write more accurately!)
- masklinn 14y ago
  > First of all, there aren't really any decent solutions for the problem in Ruby. Uh? Rack has supported streaming since the beginning, and Sinatra has had special support on top of that since 1.3. > Secondly, even if there were mature Ruby equivalents to Node.js http://rubyeventmachine.com/ http://rubyeventmachine.com/ > I can still see a lot of benefit to doing this in Rails. Don't dismiss the drawbacks. Such as self-DOS-ing. Your Rails application can only have as many clients total as you have workers if they all keep a permanent connection.
  - saurik 14y ago
    "Why your web framework should not adopt Rack API" by José Valim http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2012/06/why-your-web-framework-should-not-adopt-rack-api/ http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2012/06/why-your-web-framew... "This blog post is an attempt to detail the limitations in the Rack/CGI-based APIs that the Rails Core Team has found while working with the streaming feature that shipped with Rails 3.1 and why we need better abstractions in the long term."
sjtgraham 14y ago
Actually not everything in Node is non-blocking. IO is largely non-blocking by but there is also blocking IO in Node too (synchronous file system functions). Not to mention you definitely will block by doing something computationally intensive in a single tick of the reactor loop. Have you ever written a non-trivial "real time" app in Ruby? I have (https://github.com/stevegraham/slanger https://github.com/stevegraham/slanger). I think Ruby is actually very well suited to event driven apps. Eventmachine is a very mature library providing asynchronous I/O based on the same pattern as Node. Ruby also has fibers as a native language feature, allowing you to write asynchronous code that looks synchronous, i.e. no nested callback hell, and consequently this makes it a lot easier to write tests for. Comparing Node to Rails is also absolute nonsense. Rails is a web framework and Node is much lower level than that. Rails is essentially a suite of DSLs for building web applications. Of course there are costs associated with that amount of abstraction.
- sunkencity 14y ago
  One thing that keeps me from considering Eventmachine mature is that the built in http clients are very crude and undocumented. Example: to get working error handling one needs to use an external http client library like igrigoriks em-http-request instead of the defaults. In this regard Node comes out ahead with better core utilities to boot. Stuff like that is very confusing for new users and puts the whole framework into question (shipping with a http client that is not suitable for production use).
- amix 14y ago
  Having blocking computation is much better than having blocking IO - - especially, since most web applications spend most of their time waiting for the database/caching layer. And blocking computation can be solved in node using the clusters feature.
masklinn 14y ago
> Rails is turning into a framework that includes everything It's really not turning into anything, Rails had response streaming back in the days, the whole stack has response streaming (as long as the underlying server handles it and there's no broken middleware anywhere) and most microframeworks have response streaming. There's nothing special to response streaming. > since everything in node.js is non-blocking. Not in your wildest dreams, IO is non-blocking and that's about it. Try a bit computation in a node response flow and see your concurrency disappear. If you're looking for "everything is non-blocking", Node most definitely isn't going to cut it. > There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby Just as there are in Node. And Ruby has eventmachine which works rather well.
chaz 14y ago
Agree that best tool for the job is important, and that node.js may be the right tool if your app is very realtime-focused. But no need to go node.js if all you need is a progress indicator. I think the modern web stack does need an easy way to do realtime communication, and as a casual Rails engineer since pre 1.0, I'm happy to see this get support out of the box.
batista 14y ago
>There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby (or any other language that includes a lot of blocking libraries). How is developing "large realtime systems" in Node any better? It's a thrown together library on top of V8, in a language that doesn't even have concurrency primitives. Doing non-blocking stuff in Node is like powering your car by pedalling. It works and takes you places, but it misses the point of needing a car in the first place.
- malandrew 14y ago
  If you approach it with a Rails/framework mindset, it's worse in node.js, but if you approach designing a large realtime system as many separate loosely coupled node.js processes, it's easier. Whenever I see someone trying to cobble together their own framework by prepackaging a bunch of node.js libraries I see someone who is doing it wrong. You shoot yourself in the foot in node.js when you treat it like rails. You shoot yourself in the foot with rails when you try to do anything outside the scope of problems for which it was designed.
bascule 14y ago
"There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby (or any other language that includes a lot of blocking libraries)." As opposed to doing I/O flow control in an asynchronous, callback-driven system? Have you ever heard of the "slow consumer problem"? Not only can you build realtime systems with threads, by using synchronous I/O you'll be taking advantage of all the flow control TCP has to offer, instead of unboundedly filling up write buffers.
- malandrew 14y ago
  If you have the slow consumer problem then you start forking node.js into separate worker processes (via binary or counting semaphores) and do IPC via something like dnode (locally or even over something like seaport).
malandrew 14y ago
This is exactly what I thought when I saw this on the front page. I'm wouldn't be surprised if they eventually add a kitchen sink library. Choosing a monolithic framework doesn't encourage separation of concerns and clean interfaces. It also makes scaling horizontally more difficult. So many ruby gems are built around rails instead of being built as separate discrete libraries. This means that once Rails get really long in the tooth (it has already started to) that it's going to take a bunch of libraries that could have been timeless along with it had they not been so deeply integrated with Rails' architectural features. The fact that a document like this exists... https://github.com/radar/guides/blob/master/sprockets/sprockets.markdown https://github.com/radar/guides/blob/master/sprockets/sprock... This is a detailed guide to the internal workings of Sprockets. Hopefully with this information, somebody else besides Josh Peek, Sam Stephenson, Yehuda Katz and (partially) myself can begin to understand how Sprockets works. ... that connects so many parts of rails isn't a good sign. node.js, or more specifically npm, got things really right by making the inclusion of libraries really trivial and easy to separate concerns. I can't begin to imagine the complications with trying to do proper async around a framework that wasn't designed from the ground up to be async. I'd expect that you'll often have to dig into the internals of Rails to discover where something is functioning synchronously where you didn't expect it to. Don't get me wrong, I love the opportunity to dig into other people's code that I rely on, but that is only fun with libraries, not frameworks. When digging around in frameworks you often spend tons of time having to investigate glue code between parts to even understand the part you need to understand.

by amix 14y ago

jherdman 14y ago

I think this is a bit of an overreaction given that Rails has always been a "batteries included" framework. The fact that Rails allows for socket-like behaviour now is not a tipping point, but simply a nice little feature that may prove useful to some. When Rails starts including a messaging stack, job server, and more, then I'd be right behind you in your complaint.

adriand 14y ago
> When Rails starts including a messaging stack, job server, and more, then I'd be right behind you in your complaint. Actually, Rails 4 does include a job queue: https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/adff4a706a5d7ad18ef05303461e1a0d848bd662 https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/adff4a706a5d7ad18ef053... However, I'm not complaining. ;)
- FooBarWidget 14y ago
  Well to be more accurate: it includes a job queue API with the actual implementation being pluggable. It does not do job queuing by itself. It's just like the cache API, actual implementation depends on the cache store.
  - adriand 14y ago
    True, thanks for the correction. The person I responded to said "job server" and I'm not 100% clear on what that would cover - perhaps job queue API would fit that description, perhaps it wouldn't.

cageface 14y ago

I think the problem is that Rails was designed to solve the web problems of 2005 and a lot has changed since then. The shift to single-page, JS-driven applications and large numbers of dynamic updates requires a different set of design priorities and the performance characteristics of Ruby itself are more problematic in this environment. In many cases it makes more sense to use something like Go or Node or Erlang that was designed to handle these kinds of loads from the ground up.

jcoder 14y ago
"Shift"? I'd go for "emergence." The classic use cases are still alive and well.
bascule 14y ago
None of this is true. Single-page apps need great JSON APIs. Rails is awesome at making great JSON APIs. With Ember Data on the front end and ActiveModel::Serializers on the backend, you can completely free yourself from writing JSON serialization code. For websockets-based applications, check out Cramp. And note that as both Rails and Cramp are Rack-based, you can combine them. "Go or Node or Erlang" One of these things is not like the others...
- malandrew 14y ago
  Rails works just fine for REST, but you've forgotten the other side of this and that is the part of the framework that handles the javascript assets, i.e. Sprockets. The difference between handling the single page app in Rails and node.js is night and day. Sprockets is a nightmare to deal with.
  - bascule 14y ago
    Nobody's forcing you to use Sprockets. You can use e.g. rake-pipeline instead
  - PetrolMan 14y ago
    Please explain. I've actually had a pretty good time dealing with Sprockets. There are the occasional deployment issues but the benefits tend to more than make up for any frustrations.

ZoFreX 14y ago

I'm actually quite excited about this, because I think it makes a lot of sense for this to be in Rails, for a couple of reasons. First of all, there aren't really any decent solutions for the problem in Ruby. There's a few projects with great potential, but nothing really mature - when I needed to do this, I went with cramp.in, which hasn't been updated in over 6 months now sadly. Node.js would unequivocally have been the better tool for the job, but I didn't want to learn Javascript or Node for this one-off. Secondly, even if there were mature Ruby equivalents to Node.js, or no impediment to me using Node, I can still see a lot of benefit to doing this in Rails. Personally I think it makes sense to be able to send events down to the clients and hook into the same models and business code you already have in place in the Rails app. (For certain use-cases, for example a project that's in Rails, is mostly a "regular" web app, but you want to give live updates for certain model changes, such as messages, ticket changes, new blog posts, whatever - obviously if the app is totally oriented around live functionality then node would probably be a smarter choice) (I apologise for using the term "Node.js" as if its another web framework, I know that's not entirely accurate but I don't know enough about it to write more accurately!)

masklinn 14y ago
> First of all, there aren't really any decent solutions for the problem in Ruby. Uh? Rack has supported streaming since the beginning, and Sinatra has had special support on top of that since 1.3. > Secondly, even if there were mature Ruby equivalents to Node.js http://rubyeventmachine.com/ http://rubyeventmachine.com/ > I can still see a lot of benefit to doing this in Rails. Don't dismiss the drawbacks. Such as self-DOS-ing. Your Rails application can only have as many clients total as you have workers if they all keep a permanent connection.
- saurik 14y ago
  "Why your web framework should not adopt Rack API" by José Valim http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2012/06/why-your-web-framework-should-not-adopt-rack-api/ http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2012/06/why-your-web-framew... "This blog post is an attempt to detail the limitations in the Rack/CGI-based APIs that the Rails Core Team has found while working with the streaming feature that shipped with Rails 3.1 and why we need better abstractions in the long term."

sjtgraham 14y ago

Actually not everything in Node is non-blocking. IO is largely non-blocking by but there is also blocking IO in Node too (synchronous file system functions). Not to mention you definitely will block by doing something computationally intensive in a single tick of the reactor loop. Have you ever written a non-trivial "real time" app in Ruby? I have (https://github.com/stevegraham/slanger https://github.com/stevegraham/slanger). I think Ruby is actually very well suited to event driven apps. Eventmachine is a very mature library providing asynchronous I/O based on the same pattern as Node. Ruby also has fibers as a native language feature, allowing you to write asynchronous code that looks synchronous, i.e. no nested callback hell, and consequently this makes it a lot easier to write tests for. Comparing Node to Rails is also absolute nonsense. Rails is a web framework and Node is much lower level than that. Rails is essentially a suite of DSLs for building web applications. Of course there are costs associated with that amount of abstraction.

sunkencity 14y ago
One thing that keeps me from considering Eventmachine mature is that the built in http clients are very crude and undocumented. Example: to get working error handling one needs to use an external http client library like igrigoriks em-http-request instead of the defaults. In this regard Node comes out ahead with better core utilities to boot. Stuff like that is very confusing for new users and puts the whole framework into question (shipping with a http client that is not suitable for production use).
amix 14y ago
Having blocking computation is much better than having blocking IO - - especially, since most web applications spend most of their time waiting for the database/caching layer. And blocking computation can be solved in node using the clusters feature.

masklinn 14y ago

> Rails is turning into a framework that includes everything It's really not turning into anything, Rails had response streaming back in the days, the whole stack has response streaming (as long as the underlying server handles it and there's no broken middleware anywhere) and most microframeworks have response streaming. There's nothing special to response streaming. > since everything in node.js is non-blocking. Not in your wildest dreams, IO is non-blocking and that's about it. Try a bit computation in a node response flow and see your concurrency disappear. If you're looking for "everything is non-blocking", Node most definitely isn't going to cut it. > There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby Just as there are in Node. And Ruby has eventmachine which works rather well.

chaz 14y ago

Agree that best tool for the job is important, and that node.js may be the right tool if your app is very realtime-focused. But no need to go node.js if all you need is a progress indicator. I think the modern web stack does need an easy way to do realtime communication, and as a casual Rails engineer since pre 1.0, I'm happy to see this get support out of the box.

batista 14y ago

>There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby (or any other language that includes a lot of blocking libraries). How is developing "large realtime systems" in Node any better? It's a thrown together library on top of V8, in a language that doesn't even have concurrency primitives. Doing non-blocking stuff in Node is like powering your car by pedalling. It works and takes you places, but it misses the point of needing a car in the first place.

malandrew 14y ago
If you approach it with a Rails/framework mindset, it's worse in node.js, but if you approach designing a large realtime system as many separate loosely coupled node.js processes, it's easier. Whenever I see someone trying to cobble together their own framework by prepackaging a bunch of node.js libraries I see someone who is doing it wrong. You shoot yourself in the foot in node.js when you treat it like rails. You shoot yourself in the foot with rails when you try to do anything outside the scope of problems for which it was designed.

bascule 14y ago

"There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you develop large realtime systems in Ruby (or any other language that includes a lot of blocking libraries)." As opposed to doing I/O flow control in an asynchronous, callback-driven system? Have you ever heard of the "slow consumer problem"? Not only can you build realtime systems with threads, by using synchronous I/O you'll be taking advantage of all the flow control TCP has to offer, instead of unboundedly filling up write buffers.

malandrew 14y ago
If you have the slow consumer problem then you start forking node.js into separate worker processes (via binary or counting semaphores) and do IPC via something like dnode (locally or even over something like seaport).

malandrew 14y ago

This is exactly what I thought when I saw this on the front page. I'm wouldn't be surprised if they eventually add a kitchen sink library. Choosing a monolithic framework doesn't encourage separation of concerns and clean interfaces. It also makes scaling horizontally more difficult. So many ruby gems are built around rails instead of being built as separate discrete libraries. This means that once Rails get really long in the tooth (it has already started to) that it's going to take a bunch of libraries that could have been timeless along with it had they not been so deeply integrated with Rails' architectural features. The fact that a document like this exists... https://github.com/radar/guides/blob/master/sprockets/sprockets.markdown https://github.com/radar/guides/blob/master/sprockets/sprock... This is a detailed guide to the internal workings of Sprockets. Hopefully with this information, somebody else besides Josh Peek, Sam Stephenson, Yehuda Katz and (partially) myself can begin to understand how Sprockets works. ... that connects so many parts of rails isn't a good sign. node.js, or more specifically npm, got things really right by making the inclusion of libraries really trivial and easy to separate concerns. I can't begin to imagine the complications with trying to do proper async around a framework that wasn't designed from the ground up to be async. I'd expect that you'll often have to dig into the internals of Rails to discover where something is functioning synchronously where you didn't expect it to. Don't get me wrong, I love the opportunity to dig into other people's code that I rely on, but that is only fun with libraries, not frameworks. When digging around in frameworks you often spend tons of time having to investigate glue code between parts to even understand the part you need to understand.