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Ask HN: Why are you still on Ruby on Rails?

2 points by howon92 ↗ HN
Why are you still on Ruby on Rails?

I started web development with Ruby on Rails and learned other frameworks like Express, Meteor, Django, Flask, etc. along the way. Before working at a startup, I had thought Rails was too "old" and I should stick to JS frameworks (i.e. isomorphic or universal javascript). But after I started working with more experienced developers at my previous company, I started appreciating Rails the most out of all the frameworks I've tried. I also started noticing a lot of startups around us (in SF) still stick to Rails. This is contrary to what Google Trends shows me here (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=nodejs,ruby%20on%20rails,ruby,javascript) and I might be too myopic. Any thoughts on why people (esp. startups) still stick to Rails?

3 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 15.9 ms ] thread
kgraves
IMO it's the ecosystem of Rails, libraries and tutorials etc. Rails has a huge community behind it and it's quicker to get an MVP out there.
cholantesh
When I speak to experienced Rails developers (and most of the ones I speak to are consultants, so heavy bias there), the argument is that they are able to very quickly spin up an application and be productive. JS's toolset and quirks do not allow this.

Note: I'm not one of these devs and have only really used Ruby, not Rails, so I cannot confirm or deny this.

ta4567891
Personally I think it's good for standing up a first-cut of a CRUD web application quickly, but if I wanted a maintainable product going forward I'd use a statically typed, more fully fleshed out framework (Java/Spring, C#). I don't like where JavaScript has gone on the frontend, and certainly not on the backend, so I personally would avoid universal JavaScript like the plague - it's still reinventing wheels that were solved ages ago, and bringing very little the party as far as I can tell (apart from ease of transitioning from frontend web hacker to backend).