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Ask HN: Am I right or just procrastinating?

1 points by methochris ↗ HN
I already know python and Flask but I have this burning desire to switch over to Ruby on Rails. Everything about it seems so appealing and time-saving, from the documentation to the quality of support sites like rubygems. Flask/django have nothing like this and are such a mess in comparison. Is learning a new language/framework worth the time investment or am I just addicted to wasting time?

5 comments

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tbirrell
You should always be learning something new. If this is what peaks your interest, do it. In a month come back and see if you want to make the switch professionally (assuming this is your day job). The worst that'll happen is you'll know something new.
savethefuture
Learn learn learn learn learn, dont stick to one thing for too long. Branch out, experiment, try new things.
davelnewton
Rails and Flask are apples and oranges; something like Sinatra would be closer. There's no way to know if it's a "waste of time" because we don't know what you're doing or why. There are more Rails-like frameworks for Python.

If you have a "burning desire" to learn something, then learn it. But the notion that it'll magically make all your development easier is a pipe dream.

methochris
i'm attemptimg to make something, so far with flask, that has left me with what i'd consider a cobbled-together mess of random extensions, some maintained, some not, some snippits of code gathered here or there over the years. it does work but for how long and can i really trust it to run a business on? my gut says "no".

i'm aware of the other other python frameworks but most of them fair even worse in the areas i'm concerned about. most are abandonware or small projects that will be difficult to get help with. django is the obvious answer but theres alot of things that really rub me wrong about it. the documentation sucks, i hate the templating engine, i hate the routing with regular expressions, and i hate subclassing things that is impossible to find the code for the master class.

ruby/rails seems like just what it is: a way to make building web applications as fun as can be and there is an army of people that have contributed to that and from everything i can see, they have succeeded and i want to learn how to use it.

davelnewton
Then learn how to use it--it's unclear to me what the issue is.

(Noting that Rails plugins are much the same--some work, some don't, some are maintained well, some aren't, version conflicts, etc.)

Regarding "finding the code" -- Rails is much, much worse in that regard. There is a lot of magic, and functionality can be difficult to locate.