Ask HN: How is ruby web dev centered so much vs. Python having flask and Django? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How is ruby web dev centered so much vs. Python having flask and Django?

3 pointsnstart2 comments

Hey HN. I might be having a confirmation bias observation here but it seems that in the world of ruby web dev, THE option being used today is just rails. I rarely see Sinatra mentioned in open source projects or job openings. In the Python world however, we have flask as the go to micro framework and is used in many production scenarios especially for small web apps. But it is also balanced well with Django being used for larger scale apps. I find that in the ruby world, all sizes of apps get developed on rails to the point where ruby is almost synonymous with rails for a newcomer. If this is true, curious how this mono framework environment happened over time.

Not much experience in Rails, but I think that this is because Rails is much more modular than Django which in turn is quite large out of the box and it would not be great for smaller web applications. That's where Flask comes in. Whereas Rails can be used for applications of all sizes and that's why there's no need to learn another framework if you already have used it.

Although I feel that Flask is slowly becoming more popular than Django and contrary to popular belief, it's quite good even for large projects.

I think that the situation with Rails inside the Ruby ecosystem is similar to Express within the Node ecosystem. Highly modular frameworks that are used by almost everyone inside their respective ecosystems and even though there are other alternatives that cover specific niches, these two can cover much more than one single niche.

I'm curious why you say "Rails is much more modular than Django" when Rails includes more out of the box, and is more opinionated than Django. In fact, I would say that the opposite is true. Django is completely appropriate for tiny web projects, not just large ones. And how is Flask becoming "more popular" than Django? By what metric?

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