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This is bullshit. In my whole experience as a full stack developer, after having tried various technologies and languages and frameworks - including ones built

by neya 13y ago

This is bullshit. In my whole experience as a full stack developer, after having tried various technologies and languages and frameworks - including ones built with PHP, Ruby, Scala, Javascript and Golang, I can this say with full confidence and can afford to put my name and credibility to stake - Nothing is going to replace Ruby on rails anytime soon. I wish something would, but nothing at the moment, is even close to the scale at which rails gets things done. I truly mean it. And something built out of Javascript replacing a Ruby-based full-bleed framework? I think you must be fucking kidding me. What the author describes is a very specific use-case and maybe, just maybe Meteor JS might replace a portion of that use case. In fact, if I were to do something like what the author suggests, I would still choose rails and Knockout JS (or Angular JS if you know it better). Do you know how long it takes to build a Facebook backend clone in rails? Maybe a day? And the frontend (all the Ajaxy stuff) should probably add a week or two (worse-case scenario). That's just it. That's the power of rails. If you were to build the backend in Javascript without the power that Rails provides I'm sure you will need more than just a day, let alone a week. The point is, nothing is close to what rails is right now. I badly wanted something to replace rails for my work, but I haven't found a single solution that fits my needs. I've tried everything - Play, Sails, Revel, Gorilla, etc etc. But nothing there is that can replace rails. And all the frameworks that claim to be more like Rails, they're simply not true. Have you tried using play (Scala) and PostgreSQL together? The experience is nothing like Rails. I can make a clone of any complex app out there in the web in a matter of minutes/hours. That's the power that rails gives me and no other framework/combination can't. I understand that Rails is slow. But this is not the right way to critique it - Claiming something is going to replace it when it actually isn't true. We develop all our v0.1s in Rails in house and port them to Go (only if necessary and if the project owner is particular about it.) and that seems to work well for us.

meowface 13y ago
>Do you know how long it takes to build a Facebook backend clone in rails? Maybe a day? A basic social network clone? Sure, maybe a day. But to emulate all the features Facebook has would probably take well over a month if done alone, even if the dev was very experienced with Rails.
- dubcanada 13y ago
  Well over a month to clone all of facebook. I hope you don't estimate as a living. To clone facebook would take well over a year.
  - tobobo 13y ago
    Ten years I say! Building facebook would take ten years, no less!
    - krapp 13y ago
      I could do it in five.
      - aioprisan 13y ago
        I see your 5 and I raise you 6
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    - alttab 13y ago
      Fellas. The answer is clearly 100 years. Some of you will burn out, some of you will get divorced, but in the end, you'll have a shitty facebook.
dustingetz 13y ago
You have no idea what you're talking about. Like, your whole post is false
- bzalasky 13y ago
  Seconded.
- sanderjd 13y ago
  Care to expand on why you believe this to be the case? You may be right, but it's not obvious that you are.
1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
Sure. No one is taking Rails away from you. I don't think it's bullshit. There are use cases for each. I think Meteor offers up a good debate about "how we do development these days", and attempts to answer them, albeit early. Meteor is still new, and it's path is currently bumpy. But it tries, and innovation is a wonderful thing, that's what Rails gave us early on. The sad thing about Rails is it largely stagnated for some time while JS M.V.-whatevers sprouted. It couldn't solve realtime application building problems and provided no means for a client side implementation. And for the most part still does (although 4 supports SSEs). You just have to do so much glueing. One more: what about the inherently non-threadsafe nature of rubygems? How will Rails overcome being a threadsafe framework when it's dependancy mechanism has no safety check? I digress. These are solved problems on node, and it's something Rails still stagnates with. My point here is: Rails has issues too, big ones. I can see Meteor either evolving nicely, or fading away. Keep in mind that it already has a growing community and development is backed with solid dollars & a passionate team. I think the author is attempting to elude to the cargo-cult that hit Rails will migrate to Meteor. In time I believe many will. I think both communities will stay strong, and after enough time will begin to look like each other. Rails could learn a thing or two from Meteor. And conversely Meteor the same.
- neya 13y ago
  Thank you for your peaceful tone (unlike the author's). But I think there are a lot of opinions mixed up with your facts: >The sad thing about Rails is it largely stagnated for some time >You just have to do so much glueing >These are solved problems on node And to be clear, Node is not a 100% perfect platform either. >I think the author is attempting to elude to the cargo-cult that hit Rails will migrate to Meteor. Of all the options available, why Meteor? Like someone on this thread said, it has a lot more evolving to do, to even become on par with rails in the current situation. We're talking about the basic reason why people choose rails: Productivity (Getting stuff done) and getting your product out to the market. I think in this perspective nothing beats rails: rails new blog rails generate scaffold Post title:string text:text rails s How many lines of actual code I have written so far to actually get my basic blog idea up and running? None.
  - 13y ago
kamaal 13y ago
I'm a back end developer and don't have much experience with web technologies, so may be some one can enlighten me. Have we really come to a stage, where what Facebook has done after billions of worth investment and thousands of people working, can be cloned with a open source technology in hours? >>I can make a clone of any complex app out there in the web in a matter of minutes/hours. Again how is this possible. Or let me word it this way, if some thing can be copied in minutes how can it be called complex?
- alphakappa 13y ago
  I guess what the parent poster means is that you can create the basic functionality of Facebook easily, i.e. something that looks and feels like Facebook and works reasonably well for a few users. Whether it can support a billion users is a different story. (It won't)
  - neya 13y ago
    Thank you. That's exactly what I meant.
- neya 13y ago
  Still didn't get my point did you? I meant that you can get out an MVP of a complex web application like Facebook in a matter of hours/days (depending on the complexity of course) instead of having to wait for weeks/months when you're on with another framework. >if some thing can be copied in minutes how can it be called complex? Just because your life is made easier by a tool, doesn't necessarily mean the original process is any less complex. And that's why the market for for such tools even exist :) Translation: Just because a bottle of Coca Cola costs $0.99 and a bottle of water costs $2, doesn't mean that the process of creating Coca cola is by any means less complex. Cheers.
- yelnatz 13y ago
  I'm a beginner web developer and I can clone facebook in a few hours. In its core, the app is just users who can friend each other. Add AJAX to that... and tada, something that resembles facebook. Scaling the app to be very reactive, available to millions accessing it at the same time, and with near 100% up time is where the hundreds millions of dollars go. (and all that data mining)
flywheel 13y ago
You're wrong. Node.js has already overtaken what you think Ruby on rails "is". Node.js is the current darling of Silicon Beach. Add on some mongodb and more bells-and-whistles and you have Meteor. This is probably a more important metric than language popularity on github: http://www.statisticbrain.com/computer-programming-language-statistics/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/computer-programming-language-... And I'm sure javascript has grown quite a bit in popularity in 2013. Javascript is getting things done, and with node and mongo and now meteor, it's only getting easier. It's a fact that many don't want to face, but you may need to practice your JavaScript skills to find your next job.
rywalker 13y ago
@neya have you tried Meteor yet? I am a Rails dev since 0.8 — but since moving to Meteor the past few months, I'll not go back to Rails.
joshowens 13y ago
I'd be willing to go toe to toe on building a clone in Meteor while you build it in rails.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  That actually might be a neat one-day hackathon: strip a popular website down to its essence and implement it as fast as you can with your favorite framework of choice. I'd be willing to go toe-to-toe with you guys on no framework at all - just HTML/CSS/JS and perhaps a little JSON feed to an AppEngine datastore if data needs to be persisted and shared among multiple users.
vysakh0 13y ago
Totally agree with you. When you said about the Facebook clone part, I had to nod my head even more faster :) coz I once built one, blogging it side by side http://vysakh.quora.com/Making-a-Facebook-clone-using-Rails-in-minimum-time http://vysakh.quora.com/Making-a-Facebook-clone-using-Rails-...
slashclee 13y ago
This is bullshit. In my whole experience as a full stack developer, after having tried various technologies and languages and frameworks - including ones built with Perl, PHP, ColdFusion, and WebObjects, I can this say with full confidence and can afford to put my name and credibility to stake - Nothing is going to replace Enterprise JavaBeans anytime soon. I wish something would, but nothing at the moment, is even close to the scale at which EJB gets things done. I truly mean it. And something built out of Ruby replacing a Java-based full-bleed framework? I think you must be fucking kidding me. What the author describes is a very specific use-case and maybe, just maybe Rails might replace a portion of that use case. In fact, if I were to do something like what the author suggests, I would still choose EJB and jBoss (or Orion if you know it better). etc, etc.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  BTW hipsters using Ruby/Meteor in SF does not mean it replaces something in the whole global industry :).
- ollysb 13y ago
  For performance sure, a java based solution is going to kick rail's ass. For speed of development though developing with EJBs is not even up to the standard of rails 1. The funny thing is, java is generally used to build enterprise apps which don't need anything like web scale performance. For this profile of app rails really shines, it's plenty fast enough and will hugely reduce development costs.

by neya 13y ago

meowface 13y ago

>Do you know how long it takes to build a Facebook backend clone in rails? Maybe a day? A basic social network clone? Sure, maybe a day. But to emulate all the features Facebook has would probably take well over a month if done alone, even if the dev was very experienced with Rails.

dubcanada 13y ago
Well over a month to clone all of facebook. I hope you don't estimate as a living. To clone facebook would take well over a year.
- tobobo 13y ago
  Ten years I say! Building facebook would take ten years, no less!
  - krapp 13y ago
    I could do it in five.
    - aioprisan 13y ago
      I see your 5 and I raise you 6
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - alttab 13y ago
    Fellas. The answer is clearly 100 years. Some of you will burn out, some of you will get divorced, but in the end, you'll have a shitty facebook.

dustingetz 13y ago

You have no idea what you're talking about. Like, your whole post is false

bzalasky 13y ago
Seconded.
sanderjd 13y ago
Care to expand on why you believe this to be the case? You may be right, but it's not obvious that you are.

1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago

Sure. No one is taking Rails away from you. I don't think it's bullshit. There are use cases for each. I think Meteor offers up a good debate about "how we do development these days", and attempts to answer them, albeit early. Meteor is still new, and it's path is currently bumpy. But it tries, and innovation is a wonderful thing, that's what Rails gave us early on. The sad thing about Rails is it largely stagnated for some time while JS M.V.-whatevers sprouted. It couldn't solve realtime application building problems and provided no means for a client side implementation. And for the most part still does (although 4 supports SSEs). You just have to do so much glueing. One more: what about the inherently non-threadsafe nature of rubygems? How will Rails overcome being a threadsafe framework when it's dependancy mechanism has no safety check? I digress. These are solved problems on node, and it's something Rails still stagnates with. My point here is: Rails has issues too, big ones. I can see Meteor either evolving nicely, or fading away. Keep in mind that it already has a growing community and development is backed with solid dollars & a passionate team. I think the author is attempting to elude to the cargo-cult that hit Rails will migrate to Meteor. In time I believe many will. I think both communities will stay strong, and after enough time will begin to look like each other. Rails could learn a thing or two from Meteor. And conversely Meteor the same.

neya 13y ago
Thank you for your peaceful tone (unlike the author's). But I think there are a lot of opinions mixed up with your facts: >The sad thing about Rails is it largely stagnated for some time >You just have to do so much glueing >These are solved problems on node And to be clear, Node is not a 100% perfect platform either. >I think the author is attempting to elude to the cargo-cult that hit Rails will migrate to Meteor. Of all the options available, why Meteor? Like someone on this thread said, it has a lot more evolving to do, to even become on par with rails in the current situation. We're talking about the basic reason why people choose rails: Productivity (Getting stuff done) and getting your product out to the market. I think in this perspective nothing beats rails: rails new blog rails generate scaffold Post title:string text:text rails s How many lines of actual code I have written so far to actually get my basic blog idea up and running? None.
- 13y ago

kamaal 13y ago

I'm a back end developer and don't have much experience with web technologies, so may be some one can enlighten me. Have we really come to a stage, where what Facebook has done after billions of worth investment and thousands of people working, can be cloned with a open source technology in hours? >>I can make a clone of any complex app out there in the web in a matter of minutes/hours. Again how is this possible. Or let me word it this way, if some thing can be copied in minutes how can it be called complex?

alphakappa 13y ago
I guess what the parent poster means is that you can create the basic functionality of Facebook easily, i.e. something that looks and feels like Facebook and works reasonably well for a few users. Whether it can support a billion users is a different story. (It won't)
- neya 13y ago
  Thank you. That's exactly what I meant.
neya 13y ago
Still didn't get my point did you? I meant that you can get out an MVP of a complex web application like Facebook in a matter of hours/days (depending on the complexity of course) instead of having to wait for weeks/months when you're on with another framework. >if some thing can be copied in minutes how can it be called complex? Just because your life is made easier by a tool, doesn't necessarily mean the original process is any less complex. And that's why the market for for such tools even exist :) Translation: Just because a bottle of Coca Cola costs $0.99 and a bottle of water costs $2, doesn't mean that the process of creating Coca cola is by any means less complex. Cheers.
yelnatz 13y ago
I'm a beginner web developer and I can clone facebook in a few hours. In its core, the app is just users who can friend each other. Add AJAX to that... and tada, something that resembles facebook. Scaling the app to be very reactive, available to millions accessing it at the same time, and with near 100% up time is where the hundreds millions of dollars go. (and all that data mining)

flywheel 13y ago

You're wrong. Node.js has already overtaken what you think Ruby on rails "is". Node.js is the current darling of Silicon Beach. Add on some mongodb and more bells-and-whistles and you have Meteor. This is probably a more important metric than language popularity on github: http://www.statisticbrain.com/computer-programming-language-statistics/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/computer-programming-language-... And I'm sure javascript has grown quite a bit in popularity in 2013. Javascript is getting things done, and with node and mongo and now meteor, it's only getting easier. It's a fact that many don't want to face, but you may need to practice your JavaScript skills to find your next job.

rywalker 13y ago

@neya have you tried Meteor yet? I am a Rails dev since 0.8 — but since moving to Meteor the past few months, I'll not go back to Rails.

joshowens 13y ago

I'd be willing to go toe to toe on building a clone in Meteor while you build it in rails.

nostrademons 13y ago
That actually might be a neat one-day hackathon: strip a popular website down to its essence and implement it as fast as you can with your favorite framework of choice. I'd be willing to go toe-to-toe with you guys on no framework at all - just HTML/CSS/JS and perhaps a little JSON feed to an AppEngine datastore if data needs to be persisted and shared among multiple users.

vysakh0 13y ago

Totally agree with you. When you said about the Facebook clone part, I had to nod my head even more faster :) coz I once built one, blogging it side by side http://vysakh.quora.com/Making-a-Facebook-clone-using-Rails-in-minimum-time http://vysakh.quora.com/Making-a-Facebook-clone-using-Rails-...

slashclee 13y ago

This is bullshit. In my whole experience as a full stack developer, after having tried various technologies and languages and frameworks - including ones built with Perl, PHP, ColdFusion, and WebObjects, I can this say with full confidence and can afford to put my name and credibility to stake - Nothing is going to replace Enterprise JavaBeans anytime soon. I wish something would, but nothing at the moment, is even close to the scale at which EJB gets things done. I truly mean it. And something built out of Ruby replacing a Java-based full-bleed framework? I think you must be fucking kidding me. What the author describes is a very specific use-case and maybe, just maybe Rails might replace a portion of that use case. In fact, if I were to do something like what the author suggests, I would still choose EJB and jBoss (or Orion if you know it better). etc, etc.

CmonDev 13y ago
BTW hipsters using Ruby/Meteor in SF does not mean it replaces something in the whole global industry :).
ollysb 13y ago
For performance sure, a java based solution is going to kick rail's ass. For speed of development though developing with EJBs is not even up to the standard of rails 1. The funny thing is, java is generally used to build enterprise apps which don't need anything like web scale performance. For this profile of app rails really shines, it's plenty fast enough and will hugely reduce development costs.