Ask HN: Is Ruby/Rails over?
With even the coding bootcamps having mostly moved on from Ruby/Rails, is it still worthwhile today to begin a project in Rails or to learn Rails as a beginning developer?
The former is over. The era when a "Rails shop" (consultant) could grow quickly - often by delivering brand new apps to customers who asked for Rails by name - ended years ago. I don't think there's a current equivalent to this. For a few years, the interest in mobile apps was about as high as Rails had been, but that's past too. (It's not a language or framework, but… I think containers/Docker has had this spot for the last 1-2 years.)
The latter is still true. Rails is still remarkably efficient in developer time. Moreover, a developer who enjoyed writing Ruby 5 or 10 years ago will probably enjoy it even more now. Of course, other languages and frameworks have also improved[2], but Rails is still competitive by these measures.
One thing that has changed from "peak Rails": the importance of JavaScript and client-side, well, everything. For about 2 years, choosing a JS-centric stack often led to using Node. Since 2015 or so, I think server-independent frameworks (React) and languages (TypeScript) made other server frameworks competitive again.
[1]: or Ruby, but not many people were attracted to Ruby for this reason
[2]: Node gets a lot of attention as a "Rails competitor," but I think someone considering Rails for developer productivity and happiness would probably consider Python (Django) and more recently, Crystal (Lucky or Kemal) before Node.
More importantly, it remains one of the best, if not the best framework to get things done in a minimum amount of time.
As long as I love Angular, React and Vue for the front-end, I think that Javascript is a fragile and ugly mess for writing backends.
If speed is not a major concern, using Rails for the backend is a great alternative, that works really well.
Rails 5.2 is round the corner and brings exciting new features such as ActiveStorage.
Rails is not the new fad, but it's still something solid you can rely on, and that will automatically apply some of the best practices for you. This is especially important for new developers.
Also, as a new developer, Rails conventions forces you to structure your project in a specific way. Which can be annoying at first, but this will eventually help you understand how to structure all your projects in a clean and consistent way, in all programming languages.
The same can be said for other frameworks, but Rails remains one of the most comprehensive one, while touching all possible areas of application development.
Also, as a beginning developer, you want to have fun. Enjoy what you do. Type 2 lines of code and immediately see the difference. Quickly build applications that do what you had in mind. The last thing you want is fight with tools, dependencies and random breakages.
And Rails delivers that.
If one is more concerned with server speed, then maybe Elixir/Phoenix could be a better solution.
While I do know other frameworks (Flask) and am currently learning Elixir/Phoenix, I often still use Rails because I'm a big fan of picking the right tool for the job.
You should listen to this podcast from DHH which came out yesterday:
https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/rr-342-rails-development-davi...
Technology has its fads, but somethings stick around. There are plenty of people still coding in C. Laravel is a pretty big PHP framework.
There are plenty of companies that built on Rails. The cost of switching to a new technology is likely unfeasible. So likely the product/company will continue to use Rails.
So if you like Ruby/Rails, I say go for it!
Of course, as there is no real-world alternative to C for some applications. The famous Linus Torvalds rant on C++ still rings true today.