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Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

You can write large applications in Rails that run fast, have low bug counts and are not hard to maintain or extend. There are many examples in the wild.

Rails is quicker to build in than Java, C# or Go for most functionality needed in most web applications for similar skilled developers. In my experience, up to 3x quicker.

I’ve worked on large monoliths and SOAs, and worked alongside Java teams. I even introduced Go to a Rails shop because I believed what you did.

Turns out the real problems were MVC isn’t right for everything, and we weren’t name-spacing with enough rigour. Fix those in small and targeted areas, and Rails is just fine.

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As a dev that hasn't touched Ruby in his time yet, could you expand on the productivity differences you've seen between Java/C# and ruby devs? I totally buy that a language like ruby can be more productive, but a 3x difference is wild. Have you found that RoR is really just that much more productive than say, Spring or Asp.NET?

(Ruby -> Rails) As one that switched into Rails after a decade of web dev, IME its the batteries included nature. You can't compare Rails to Go or Typescript. You compare Rails to language + all the standard libraries people use. The trick with Rails is _most_ of those choices are baked into the framework, so e.g. 25 rails dev's will know _mostly_ the same exact set of libraries walking in the door.

Personally I absolutely hate it, and regret taking a job in it. Its the first language ecosystem that made me realize yes, apparently I really do care a lot about the language(s) I work in (had prior exp in php, python, java, Go, and Typescript, and enjoyed most of them). But I wouldn't knock anyone for using it, especially if they can hire experienced teammates in it or generally find the approach (typeless, convention over configuration) appealing. It's definitely a great choice for a web product if the team(s) will stick with it over time. I'd happily manage a team using it at this point, I just don't want to write it anymore.

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