Ask HN: Why RoR is popular among startups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why RoR is popular among startups?

8 pointspknerd20 comments

What's wrong with languages like PHP,Python or Java that they are not being adapted?

That's not even true. Plenty of startups use the languages you mentioned.

When Rails first got released, there was a certain wow factor - it made making sites very easy. There have been plenty of web frameworks released afterwards for other languages that made it easy to spin up a new web project, but Rails has remained ahead in terms of how much mention it gets, for various reasons: first-mover advantage, its community is louder, etc.

I think the reason of rapid development is the reason of its popularity.

Except that you can develop just as fast in Python if you knew what you were doing.

Ok, but you can't develop as fast in Java or C# even if you knew what you were doing.

I can't speak to what is wrong with other languages and why they are not being adapted (or if that's even true) but here's why I love Ruby and Rails and use it at my company for any custom or web-app development work from a programmers POV: it's expressive, highly reusable, progressive and fast.

Expressive - I can write code the way I think with Ruby & Rails. It feels natural to me. A lot of this has to do with the flexibility and dynamic nature of Ruby.

Reusable - One of the ideals of Rails is DRY ... don't repeat yourself. This ideal manifests itself in many ways that allow you to reuse components at a very fine level.

Progressive - Unlike PHP or Java, Ruby & Rails feels to be improving at a faster pace. Community and results have been put above egos, even though there are very strong, opinionated egos in the leadership.

Fast - Rapid prototyping can be done with Rails with a low cost. You can get to where you're trying to get at a faster rate with Rails.

It sounds too much like a religion to me.

I'm from a c,c++, and now PHP background and the syntax of ruby has always seemed backwards to me. In addition to this, Rails adds too many abstraction levels. I feel like it's actually dumbing down future developers.

PHP gives me just enough power and now has enough OO support to build large-scale projects. It's not without its flaws, but I have used it in many projects over the years and will continue to do so until I have a reason to switch.

I can understand why you consider the syntax of Ruby as backwards seeing how you come from a C-background, they're quite different languages in most ways.

To be honest, the OO support in PHP feels a lot like an afterthought (and it actually is), it never quite feels right.

I understand that it sounds like a religion. It's probably because, at least for me, my choice of it is just as much about it ideals as it is about it's technical pros & cons.

I do Python and used to do a fair bit of Django work. Melvin's reasons are pretty on the dot.

Migrations are one advantage Rails has over Django. They're otherwise pretty similar. (South doesn't count.)

I wouldn't say that any language dumbs anybody down. People can be dumb in any language. You should chill in ##C on Freenode and see what stupid really is.

south is the de facto standard for django migrations - is there any other reason besides not being in the django proper for it to not count?

It doesn't compare to rails migrations. The lack of integration is crippling as well.

Python is the most popular serverside solution among startups according to this poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843083

Ruby was second, PHP third.

(JavaScript got the most votes, but everyone uses JavaScript on their website, and I refuse to believe that the many people who voted for JavaScript all use it on the serverside (like Node.js, e.g.). That's why I claim that Python is the most popular serverside language according to that poll).

I wonder if simply reading HackerNews skews our view on what languages and frameworks are used at startups.

A lot of startups use Python - Django is the Python analogue of Rails. Dropbox uses Python, as do Parsely, Lot18, Hunch, et al.

Not to mention Disqus - they use Django.

I think most of the web startups prefer scripting languages in which their founders/developers are comfortable. It could be Php, Java, Ruby, Python or any other language. I would prefer Perl as I m good with it and can get things done quickly :)

I agree. Before we started our project we had to decide which web framework to use. We chose Django because we're comfortable with python. Also, django seemed to be very well documented. (The others may also have great docs. I don't know cause I've never really checked.)

Nothing, but our industry is driven a bit by fashion. Ruby is sexy to young-ins because its virgin territory. Start-ups do this to attract other sexy young-ins that are full of energy.

Downvoted because your statements are completely false and based on nothing. If you actually used Rails then you will know better than to make such statement.

If you actually used Rails...

I've used Rails. (Goodness, I used Ruby in 2000. Get off my lawn.)

Plenty of the Internet's programming culture is driven by fashion. I saw plenty of projects written in Java in the early 2000s because that's "what investors want[ed]". When some of those Java programmers woke up from their XML-as-configuration comas in 2005 and 2006, they brought that sense of mission with them to Rails, ignoring the almost 20 years of dynamic languages getting things done up to that point. (No XML situps? Monkeypatching instead of Spring? Naked objects instead of beans? Auto-generated accessors? Ruby and Rails invented none of that, but good for Rails for attracting an audience.)

Ruby's a decent language, but it still suffers the growing pains of adolescence. It'll catch up. (A language test suite is a nice start.)

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