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Comment by pankajdoharey | Hacker News Reader

Rails is over there is too much traction for Functional Programming these days, and Javascript seems to be the easiest language to explore functional programming and Composability. JS and Nodejs in my opinion are the best and most used langauges in 2018. Also Rails is not beginner friendly, if you are using Rails for a few yrs only then you can understand tons of quirks and pre written code in your controllers. If you are unaware the evolution of quirks then it may seem alien to you. An interesting framework to me seems to be Hanami, compared to Rails. Also if you are feeling Brave then Try Go or Clojure. These are excellent languages and are targetted to solve particular niches they serve. Both of these Niche areas they serve have grown significantly in the past few yrs.

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> JS and Nodejs in my opinion are the best and most used langauges in 2018

most used? probably. best? not even close. the main reason transpilers from other languages into JS became so popular this last decade is because JS is a horror shit show of a language.

I said for 2018. The App ecosystem has changed a lot since 2005 when rails was Released, more apps these days use a combination of JS + Firebase. For most CRUD styled SPI's this is the "best" way to write apps. Rails is no where in this ecosystem, it still depends on age old Nginx+SQL+Rails style, but the truth is most new apps want to start small. So for 2018 JS is the "Best" unlike Rails. The number of transpilers that exist for JS is an indication of JS invasiveness, its ubiquity and simplicity to transpile to. Since JS is a much smaller languaage than Ruby it is easier to transpile to. Some languages do give better tools of abstraction but at the end all those higher thoughts are implemented in the same JS which is a good indication of its usability, There are good and bad parts both in JS, but i dont think it is a complete shit show, just better educate yourself as a programmer to use the good parts. I think you are not aware of the interesting ways you can write composable code in JS. Rails depends on the Magic of Ruby, one can write great DSL's is Ruby and thus Rails, But Rails with its MVC toolchain alone does serve the needs of large apps, it is OK to do CRUD apps, but for large apps MVC breaks inside Rails. This is a big reason why a number of people have switched back to simpler ways to do things like Routing+Templates+Glue Code makes a webapp such as in Express.js , Rails is simply too big when it starts, with too much magic that people dont want to bother with. Which is why more Apps these days are activated in Nodejs frameworks. There is a reason for its popularity it isnt a coincidence, there are things people like in JS/Nodejs/Express.js that it is so popular.

The reason for its popularity is like with Java and C++ and C# - a combination of unfortunate feedback loops: companies are looking for cheap developers familiar with technology they already use.

Has nothing to do with JS’s or ecosystem’s sanity or (nonexistent) advantages over other languages.

Let's not forget about Elixir. Elixir is what pulled me into functional programming. However, I would argue that you should still use the right tool (programming language and/or frameworks) for the job.

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