The conversation

sickcodebruhHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I started my professional career with Rails 8 years ago and deeply miss aspects of it

I started my professional career with Rails 8 years ago and deeply miss aspects of it. It uses lines of code so efficiently, letting you go from zero to product with outrageous speed. Everything is a solved problem. Ruby as a language is so expressive, so beautifully ergonomic, so easy to read. It's such a joy. But the view layer has not aged well. After years of working with a focus on React and TypeScript, I can't stomach the Rails approach to views. As much as I appreciate the value proposition of Stimulus and truly feel the shortcomings of SPAs deep in my bones, I crave components, type safety, unidirectional data flow, and more options for styling than just classes. React in particular has rich options for UI frameworks that feel truly idiomatic. The last time I tried to start a project with Rails, I moved at a breakneck pace until I got to the view layer, at which point I had to pull the plug. I'm reaching for Next.js these days because it's the closest I can get. …

Original discussionBuilding GitHub with Ruby on Rails318 source comments · at import
3

What was this responding to?

Parent context · original excerpt

UP
upmostlyHN

I absolutely love Rails. I'll always remember back in 2010 catching the train to Waterloo station in London and seeing a huge sign overlooking the train tracks that read something like "We Need Rails Developers". Rails was such a huge part of my professional career. Now, 13 years later and I'm deep in the JavaScript ecosystem and have been for 8 years. The most exciting thing to come out of this ecosystem recently is RedwoodJS, because it takes a lot of inspiration from Rails.

Full original

Community replies 0

No community replies yet. Add your perspective.

Replies from the source 3

Direct replies available in this import. Original-language excerpts.

GE
gedyHN

> But the view layer has not aged well. Agreed - In my opinion, Rails messaging/soft marketing could be a lot better about how it's great for a data driven backend, whatever the frontend/UI. I know there's things like API mode and webpacker, but this all seems very secondary and begrudging at times. Maybe I listen too much to what DHH says, but definitely think the Rails view stuff should be what's secondary. It's a turnoff for a lot of devs who would otherwise be quite happy with Rails as a backend.

Full original
SI
simonbarker87HN

I never learned RoR, it’s had been perpetually number 3 on my “to learn” list for over a decade. However I loved CodeIgniter and also crave that all in one-ness so find myself going to NextJS time and time again now for that reason. I pair Next with Nest (sigh, why only one letter different?) when I need a proper backend but I can get so far with Next that I’m using it less and less now.

Full original
AL
aledalgrandeHN

Have you use the whole Hotwire suite? It's much better than just Stimulus. Componentizing your views will also make it more modern.

Full original
Continue on Hacker News

Respect different perspectives. Share concrete experiences.

Sign in to post, reply, repost, and quote.