Ask HN: Rails in 2019? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Rails in 2019?

2 pointsmichaelbrave3 comments

I've finally started learning to code, but it's about 10 years later than I wanted to (life gets in the way sometimes). When I first started learning I loved the ruby community and rails with it. But Whenever I talk to colleagues or other students about thinking I want to learn it I'm only met with blank stares or confusion about why I would want to ("why not node?" they say). I try to explain that I still think it's used a lot, that I liked the community or what I remember of it and that it's great for making things quickly (especially proof of concepts). I don't think I was very convincing though because I don't really know enough yet.

So I guess my question is, is it worth learning still? I have a curiosity toward it but I don't want to learn an outdated stack. Also what would be similar, what communities feel like ruby did in 2011? Any resources to learn that are good today? I'm open to possibilities here.

Thanks all.

I work for a famous Silicon Valley company and we use Ruby, Python, Swift, C++, Obj. C primarily. JavaScript is used by front-end types, but at least around here, JavaScript isn’t really a serious language outside of front end development. It’s certainly not being used for server-side anything or at least not on any project I know about. However there are some serious systems (hundreds of millions of user accounts) that actually use rails. There is a lot of python here but not much Django. A bit of Java in some systems, but the “cool” stuff is Swift, Objective C, Ruby, C++.

The Ruby community is just as vibrant as is always has been but it’s a little less infected with hipster trend chasing than it used to be. JavaScript is the clear winner in that regard. JavaScript is also a noisy community in that there is a lot of ways to skin a cat, while the Ruby world tends to be more opinionated. So, in my opinion, the Ruby (and Rails) Way is a “thing,” while there really isn’t a cohesive “JavaScript Way.”

If I were starting over from zero, I’d still learn Ruby and Rails, but I’d probably lean towards Swift and Vapor. Vapor feels like the Rails community circa 2010 and Swift is blazing fast and can be used for native Mac/iOS, web applications, and highly performant server applications.

To be clear, I am not suggesting not learning JavaScript, but I personally wouldn’t make it my primary language. But I kind of follow my own trail, so my advice might not be popular, however it has worked for me.

Swift and vapor I wouldn't have even known to look up, thank you.

Cool, so the hype died down but a lot of the substance is still there, that's helpful too, thank you.

Rails is effective, boring, productive, and widely used.

What kinds of things are you interested in building?

If you're learning to code to get a web development job, I would lean towards starting with learning Javascript, then building small front-end games and tools (whatever you think would be fun to make), and then learning to use a library like React to make those even better.

At some point after that, sure, learn how to be productive with Ruby/Rails. It's not going anywhere. Or maybe at that point there will be some amazing Node framework with similar strengths to Rails that you can learn instead, but that would surprise me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com