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"37Signals hasn't been the forefront of web-app design for a few years now." Exactly. This shift isn't just "single page web apps" either. It is a generationa

by hosh 14y ago

"37Signals hasn't been the forefront of web-app design for a few years now." Exactly. This shift isn't just "single page web apps" either. It is a generational shift. When people say "apps" now, it isn't a "web app". For all the thousands of hours of experience DHH says he has, it is stuck in a very narrow view while the rest of the world has moved on. That's ok though. The neat thing about open source is that developers and users do not have to suffer dinosaurs for long. It does mean that I can no longer depend on my Rails skill to put food on the table. Recruiters, desperate for Rails developers, will no longer be knocking on my door. It's a good thing I've been laying in the groundwork for the inevitable irrelevancy of Rails.

dasil003 14y ago
"The rest of the world has moved on"? Good lord man, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and the web is not simply "apps". If you think Rails is irrelevant today than you are practicing fad-driven-development moreso than developing any real insight about the lay of the software land.
- hosh 14y ago
  Yes. The rest of the world has moved on. If you've characterized what I am saying here as "web is simply apps", then you do not understand what I am saying. I've written this in one other comment, I suppose I will repeat myself: (1) There are more mobile units being sold than personal computers. (2) More importantly, there are 2 year olds whose first experience with a personal computing device will be a smartphone or a tablet. When the start going to school, they will be forced to use a keyboard and will resent it. They will see this as a problem to be solved, and will solve it. This is a generation gap, something between 10 - 18 years from now. (3) Our generation tend to think of the "web" as experienced primarily through a desktop or a laptop. We also like to think that we are at the cutting edge. We are not: these two year olds are. (4) Rails is designed and used by people who experience the "web" through a desktop, and refuses to see where the world will be heading in the following years. There are a lot more. So yes. The direction Rails is going will lead it to its irrelevance.
  - dasil003 14y ago
    You're backpedaling.
    - hosh 14y ago
      How am I backpedaling?
      - dasil003 14y ago
        Sorry I was severely jetlagged when I posted that and don't remember wth I was thinking. At any rate, I don't see mobile-first making Rails irrelevant. Rails has never been cutting edge on front-end development except at the very very beginning when they bundled the brand-new Prototype library. But by the time they hit 1.0, seven years ago or whatever it was, they were already going down dead-end alleys like RJS in an attempt to avoid javascript. Since then Rails hasn't done anything amazing with front-end development, but they've stayed relevant in their own way with the asset pipeline, coffeescript, and generally staying out of your way to implement whatever front-end strategy you like. Server-side development isn't going anywhere, so I don't see how the shift to mobile makes Rails irrelevant.

by hosh 14y ago

dasil003 14y ago

"The rest of the world has moved on"? Good lord man, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and the web is not simply "apps". If you think Rails is irrelevant today than you are practicing fad-driven-development moreso than developing any real insight about the lay of the software land.

hosh 14y ago
Yes. The rest of the world has moved on. If you've characterized what I am saying here as "web is simply apps", then you do not understand what I am saying. I've written this in one other comment, I suppose I will repeat myself: (1) There are more mobile units being sold than personal computers. (2) More importantly, there are 2 year olds whose first experience with a personal computing device will be a smartphone or a tablet. When the start going to school, they will be forced to use a keyboard and will resent it. They will see this as a problem to be solved, and will solve it. This is a generation gap, something between 10 - 18 years from now. (3) Our generation tend to think of the "web" as experienced primarily through a desktop or a laptop. We also like to think that we are at the cutting edge. We are not: these two year olds are. (4) Rails is designed and used by people who experience the "web" through a desktop, and refuses to see where the world will be heading in the following years. There are a lot more. So yes. The direction Rails is going will lead it to its irrelevance.
- dasil003 14y ago
  You're backpedaling.
  - hosh 14y ago
    How am I backpedaling?
    - dasil003 14y ago
      Sorry I was severely jetlagged when I posted that and don't remember wth I was thinking. At any rate, I don't see mobile-first making Rails irrelevant. Rails has never been cutting edge on front-end development except at the very very beginning when they bundled the brand-new Prototype library. But by the time they hit 1.0, seven years ago or whatever it was, they were already going down dead-end alleys like RJS in an attempt to avoid javascript. Since then Rails hasn't done anything amazing with front-end development, but they've stayed relevant in their own way with the asset pipeline, coffeescript, and generally staying out of your way to implement whatever front-end strategy you like. Server-side development isn't going anywhere, so I don't see how the shift to mobile makes Rails irrelevant.