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> Unfortunately, we don’t have better options in Ruby for working with websockets. We do! Celluloid (the actor model) is vastly superior to EventMachine in my

by tinco 12y ago

> Unfortunately, we don’t have better options in Ruby for working with websockets. We do! Celluloid (the actor model) is vastly superior to EventMachine in my opinion. It fits much better to Ruby's OOP style and I suspect would integrate into Rails very cleanly. I am positive that bringing any EventMachine technology into the Rails stack would be a mistake. I am saying that with a bit of a bias as I have written my own celluloid-websocket[0] gem that comes with a Rack adapter. But I wrote it because I put a project using EventMachine websockets into production and was not happy with it. Now in a new project I can just hook up the celluloid-websockets Rack app and run it using `passenger start` or any of the Rack application servers. Even though so many people seem to flock to Node.JS for these kinds of servers, the fact that as a language Ruby is superior to Javascript remains, even if Javascript VMs are a hundred times as fast. As long as Node.JS is run on standards compliant VM's things like promises are just lipstick on the callback hell pig. You can write clean and understandable Ruby to solve any problem, including Websocket servers. We as the Ruby community were just late to the asynchronous I/O party. Now Celluloid is production ready, there's really no reason (except for performance of course) for a Ruby developer to write Javascript on the server side. (sorry for my extreme opinions, if you want a more nuanced deliberation on a point just ask ;)) 0] https://rubygems.org/gems/celluloid-websocket https://rubygems.org/gems/celluloid-websocket

railsbird 12y ago
A year ago we benchmarked Celluloid and Event Machine. Celluloid was much better... on JRuby. Event Machine was better on CRuby based on our tests and, since we couldn't migrate to the JVM due to other factors, we ended-up stuck with CRuby and Event Machine.
onli 12y ago
Do you have experience with https://github.com/ngauthier/tubesock https://github.com/ngauthier/tubesock? In a very small project of mine I used https://github.com/minoritea/sinatra-hijacker https://github.com/minoritea/sinatra-hijacker which I found very nice to program with.
wilmoore 12y ago
>> the fact that as a language Ruby is superior to Javascript remains, even if Javascript VMs are a hundred times as fast. As someone who frequently switches between Ruby/Rails and NodeJS (sometimes in the same day), I wonder about this statement (err, fact). You mentioned that the Ruby language is superior and that this is a "fact". What about the Ruby (I know Node isn't really a language, but for the sake of discussion, Node,JS,npm) is substantially better that the speed trade-off is worth it (besides familiarity)? In my case, I'm familiar with both, and I prefer Node,JS,npm. Node,JS,npm are definitely not perfect, yet still, I like it over Rails,Ruby,Gems/Bundler. I'm not looking to "win" here; I'm just very curious now given your assertion.
- tinco 12y ago
  > What about the Ruby (I know Node isn't really a language, but for the sake of discussion, Node,JS,npm) is substantially better that the speed trade-off is worth it (besides familiarity)? It's a bit stupid, it's hard for me to even consider the idea of Javascript being in the same category as Ruby. Of course, with Node.JS existing it's totally fair to bunch them in the same category, they're both server side scripting languages. Ruby was designed from scratch to be a perfect generic scripting language, merging the OO concepts of Smalltalk with the power and unix-friendliness of Perl. No constraints, just an implementation of a programmers dream. Javascript on the other hand was designed to be a language ran in the browser, with a tightly controlled I/O system a very domain specific standard library and a very short schedule. It's got warts and plain mistakes, it took decades for people to see past them and value Javascript for its redeeming qualities. The redeeming qualities being first class functions and the unexpectedly useful asynchronous I/O model. You state that you like Node.JS over Rails. I would hesitantly agree. Rails isn't of this time anymore, they made the mistake of not embracing JSON APIs as the future of web development, and are foolishly continuing work on serving HTML. That both Rails-API and ActionCable were not in Rails 4 demonstrates they are simply behind the times. At the time that it became clear JSON APIs and Push protocols would become important people looked around and saw the Ruby ecosystem simply had nothing to offer. Rails wasn't serving them, and all other Ruby projects were either small, not production ready and in either case had no community following. It was a perfect moment for Node.JS which put the modern web right up front. At least, that's how I view that history. Of course, 90% of web applications being developed today are not 100% single page apps with JSON and websocket backends, so Rails isn't quite dead yet. But perhaps if you're to looking to build such a modern app the Ruby ecosystem isn't the ideal place to look for it anymore. That doesn't mean it's not viable anymore. I wrote celluloid-websocket in a few dozen lines, it basically connects Faye's websocket protocol implementation with Arcieri's Celluloid and Rack. I really want to write half a book more about why I think Ruby is so much better than Javascript, but it's getting late so you'll have to excuse me.

by tinco 12y ago

railsbird 12y ago

A year ago we benchmarked Celluloid and Event Machine. Celluloid was much better... on JRuby. Event Machine was better on CRuby based on our tests and, since we couldn't migrate to the JVM due to other factors, we ended-up stuck with CRuby and Event Machine.

onli 12y ago

Do you have experience with https://github.com/ngauthier/tubesock https://github.com/ngauthier/tubesock? In a very small project of mine I used https://github.com/minoritea/sinatra-hijacker https://github.com/minoritea/sinatra-hijacker which I found very nice to program with.

wilmoore 12y ago

>> the fact that as a language Ruby is superior to Javascript remains, even if Javascript VMs are a hundred times as fast. As someone who frequently switches between Ruby/Rails and NodeJS (sometimes in the same day), I wonder about this statement (err, fact). You mentioned that the Ruby language is superior and that this is a "fact". What about the Ruby (I know Node isn't really a language, but for the sake of discussion, Node,JS,npm) is substantially better that the speed trade-off is worth it (besides familiarity)? In my case, I'm familiar with both, and I prefer Node,JS,npm. Node,JS,npm are definitely not perfect, yet still, I like it over Rails,Ruby,Gems/Bundler. I'm not looking to "win" here; I'm just very curious now given your assertion.

tinco 12y ago
> What about the Ruby (I know Node isn't really a language, but for the sake of discussion, Node,JS,npm) is substantially better that the speed trade-off is worth it (besides familiarity)? It's a bit stupid, it's hard for me to even consider the idea of Javascript being in the same category as Ruby. Of course, with Node.JS existing it's totally fair to bunch them in the same category, they're both server side scripting languages. Ruby was designed from scratch to be a perfect generic scripting language, merging the OO concepts of Smalltalk with the power and unix-friendliness of Perl. No constraints, just an implementation of a programmers dream. Javascript on the other hand was designed to be a language ran in the browser, with a tightly controlled I/O system a very domain specific standard library and a very short schedule. It's got warts and plain mistakes, it took decades for people to see past them and value Javascript for its redeeming qualities. The redeeming qualities being first class functions and the unexpectedly useful asynchronous I/O model. You state that you like Node.JS over Rails. I would hesitantly agree. Rails isn't of this time anymore, they made the mistake of not embracing JSON APIs as the future of web development, and are foolishly continuing work on serving HTML. That both Rails-API and ActionCable were not in Rails 4 demonstrates they are simply behind the times. At the time that it became clear JSON APIs and Push protocols would become important people looked around and saw the Ruby ecosystem simply had nothing to offer. Rails wasn't serving them, and all other Ruby projects were either small, not production ready and in either case had no community following. It was a perfect moment for Node.JS which put the modern web right up front. At least, that's how I view that history. Of course, 90% of web applications being developed today are not 100% single page apps with JSON and websocket backends, so Rails isn't quite dead yet. But perhaps if you're to looking to build such a modern app the Ruby ecosystem isn't the ideal place to look for it anymore. That doesn't mean it's not viable anymore. I wrote celluloid-websocket in a few dozen lines, it basically connects Faye's websocket protocol implementation with Arcieri's Celluloid and Rack. I really want to write half a book more about why I think Ruby is so much better than Javascript, but it's getting late so you'll have to excuse me.