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Comment by jdminhbg | Hacker News Reader

Neither the first post ("WTH is going on with Rails?") nor this one is talking about upgrading existing 2.x apps to 3.x. There's a lot of stuff to change, and it can take a not insignificant development effort to port them.

But that's not the question here -- the question is whether Rails is getting progressively easier or harder for a newbie to pick up and whether those changes are going to result in better or worse applications.

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If you read the article he makes other points as well, the author of this article just seized on this because it was probably easiest to shoot down.

In the original article the author says ...

"The speed of change in using and learning rails however is a real worry for anyone who wants to use it. It might completely change by the end of next month"

That's what I'm interested in discussing, and I suspect where the real problem lies.

The problem, or the solution depending on your point of view, is that Rails is not backward compatible between minor releases. Each minor version is work to upgrade to it. My recommendation has always been "start with the latest version of Rails even if it's RC status" since upgrading will be a pain. Hopefully the RC will be complete before you need to launch.

Then you have to make the decision for each app - "Do I upgrade or stay on the latest version"? I personally prefer that tradeoff - Rails can cleanly add new features even it breaks the past. Then I decide if I need those features more than I need the pain of upgrading.

I understand your frustration -- you may not think so, but I get it. That being said, the other points I made were in support of the answer I pose to the question: Rails is growing up. The changes we've seen aren't just change for change's sake. They're changes that continue Rails' evolution by identifying pain points and presenting a default solution to them, one that can be opted out of if desired. This is not new for Rails, but it seems like every time we turn around, people are acting surprised.

They're changes that continue Rails' evolution by identifying pain points and presenting a default solution to them, one that can be opted out of if desired

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You're thinking "Why can't they just opt out of this and let us have our fun" and we're thinking "why are they forcing this on everybody".

Its kind of how you get a windows box and it has all this crap on it by default ... you can go uninstall or turn stuff off, but its fricking annoying as heck.

Some things should be the way things are done in rails, bundler, the new ActiveRecord queries. yes

Some of this other stuff, not so much ... you should have to explicitly turn it on not turn it off, and then if we're seeing wide adoption then we can make it part of the core.

What is wrong with that approach?

one that can be opted out of if desired. This is not new for Rails, but it seems like every time we turn around, people are acting surprised.

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Don't make people opt out of stuff especially on things that might not be so core to rails ... Opting out is annoying ... its much better to go "Wow, I didn't know that was there" than "crap ... I have to turn this stuff off now". It gets on people's nerves, the fact that you're not seeing that despite confessing that people complain each time it happens suggests a certain amount of tone deafness.

I could be wrong, but I think its worth re-evaluating.

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