Things that Ruby on Rails people tell you

http://jameschambers.com/blog/lies-that-ruby-on-rails-people-tell-you

by Nathandim • 14 years ago

22 67 14 years ago

jfaucett• 14 years ago

My disclaimer (and bias) is I'm a hardcore linux dev and never touch windows unless its forced upon me. So with that said, here's my thoughts.

"Myth 1: It's Easier to Bootstrap a Project In Rails"

Maybe, but still I doubt its cross platform (without headaches) - can you bootstrap MVC on Linux or Mac. This would mean you're married to the Windows Env (not a bad thing necessarly if thats what you decide you want).

"Myth 3: It's Better to Develop with RoR Because it's Open Source"

You say the complete .Net stack is open source? If so this really surprises me, considering microsofts rep, so I'd ask for links and is the C# compiler open source?

Finally, where's the advantage? ( I know you say your not trying to say this ) Why should people use something new unless there are reasons for it being not just as good but better at such and such? This whole post was about how MVC is just as good as Rails, which probably is true, but if you're a good dev and know your tools then Symfony2 or Django is probably just as good as well. The only reason to switch is when people start showing exceptionally new capabilities that make the devs life easier by trying out the new thing. Thats what rails did back in the day.

Toshio• 14 years ago

TL;DR This guy claims he was previously a free software enthusiast, but then he grew up and now he's a microsoft enthusiast.

Yay for stereotyping free software enthusiasts as basement-dwelling pre-pubescents.

Other than that, the article is pretty light on insightful content.

pjmlp• 14 years ago

I know a few guys that follow this pattern.

sergiotapia4• 14 years ago

Completely agree with the author. mvc3 and razor are fantastic to use.

irahul15• 14 years ago

> Completely agree with the author. mvc3 and razor are fantastic to use.

Then use it by all means. But mvc3 and razor can be awesome without the flamebaiting.

camus• 14 years ago

and flamebating is for people feeling unsecure about their choices.

petercooper• 14 years ago

Mostly fair points technically and a reasonable conclusion, but..

I want to be fair here – there's more than one camp in the Rails world

To be fair, quit with the linkbaity titles that tar everyone with the same brush. I could find some developers to spout off some garbage and write "BS That Dumb .Net Developers Actually Believe In" except I wouldn't, because it's ridiculous, unfair, and antagonistic. It's as simple as adding the word "some", really.

JamesChambers2• 14 years ago

Point taken, well stated. I've updated my post to reflect that. Cheers.

gamache• 14 years ago

I am a Ruby on Rails person! I will tell you some things.

I am not going to give up OS independence, on the development or server side.

I am not going to give up editor/IDE independence.

Microsoft is not seen as ahead of the curve with respect to web technologies, and this is reflected in its developer community.

Until these problems are fixed, the MS stack can pretty much go kick rocks.

pyrotechnick3• 14 years ago

http://mono-project.com

Karunamon• 14 years ago

On shaky legal ground, IIRC.

ctrlaltesc• 14 years ago

What options are available for Linux/Mac developers? Can we just install Mono and Nuget and start hacking away?

irahul15• 14 years ago

You can install Mono(on Linux at least; don't know about Mac). NuGet wasn't working last time I checked.

tommorris• 14 years ago

Yep, Mono works on Mac. And there's MonoDevelop, which is a reasonably pleasant IDE.

(I don't know about NuGet and ASP.NET MVC; I only have Mono and MonoDevelop on my Mac because occasionally I modify C# plugins for a Windows app and I like being able to see compiler errors without having to install it on a Windows machine.)

irahul15• 14 years ago

> I can use default project templates that are included in Visual Studio, download starter projects from the web, or, if I prefer, start with a completely empty solution and use Nuget to cherry-pick functionality that other developers have made available.

It's not about just the templates(I have personally never used one). Rails has useful code generation(scaffold, controller, model, migration). I would rather not type what I can generate. This isn't something you can solve with project templates.

How is this a myth that you can bootstrap a project faster using Rails? Here, take this:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html#creating-...

Show me how I do the "10 minutes blog" in your framework of choice.

> Myth 2: It's Easier to Manage Packages Rails

Great. Good on them for realizing adding assemblies using Visual Studio dialogs is a fucked up way to manage dependencies.

> Myth 3: It's Better to Develop with RoR Because it's Open Source

It's better to develop with RoR because it's open source, and when something breaks or I need to augment, I don't need to wait for my overlords.

> If your personal opinion or corporate agenda is that it's "better" to develop on OSS solutions, then good on you.

It's neither. How hard is it to understand that black boxes are a pain?

> Myth 4: I Get More Options for View Engines/I'm not Limited by Microsoft View Engines

> First of all...what limitations? The Razor view engine â the default for MVC â is likely one of the best view engines around right now.

And how is razor one of the best? http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/views/introduction-to-razor... This looks like another run of the mill template engine.

> Maturity isn't dictated by age, and what is really important is how comfortable you are with your tools.

Maturity of a framework is independent of how comfortable you are with it.

> but it doesn't mean you can dismiss VS for what it is

Umm. RoR isn't an IDE. What has RoR's maturity got to do with VS? If you want to talk about tooling, please do, but how does RoR's tooling the same as RoR maturity?

> You're likely to find just as many bad questions, answers, arguments and features in any language, if you look hard enough.

Are you seriously positing all languages have same amount of activity and features?

> I know exactly where my models go. And my views. And helpers. And filters.

And I am least interested in learning a new project layout every time I work on a different project. You know your project layout - I don't and I am not interested in learning it. The point of a standardized layout is "it's more clear where things go".

rjbond3rd• 14 years ago

For Myth 4, you're agreeing with his point. He says:

> For the record, the MVC Framework is [also] completely open source... [thus] This is not a differentiator for Rails.

irahul15• 14 years ago

I am responding to his "open source about corporate agenda or personal motto". Working with open source frameworks and libs(at least for me) has nothing to do with corporate agenda or personal motto.

JamesChambers2• 14 years ago

Hey thanks for this. I will indeed take you up on the "10 minutes blog" and put it on YouTube. I do it all the time during presentations.

I agree it's not just about the templates. We have support for scaffolding (controllers, views, migrations and more). Our models are POCOs, so they are trivial to write, and we have great helpers for that.

Agreed fully on #2. About time.

#3 - I haven't had to wait for anything. Most parts that I don't like I can and have just built my own parts for. The MVC Framework (and ASP.NET runtime) are pretty much pluggable up and down the stack.

As for the maturity piece, I think you're taking the VS comments out of context. I'm not saying MVC is an IDE and I'm not saying RoR is or isn't. My comments on this were from the segway from "tools" in the previous paragraph.

> Are you seriously positing all languages have same amount of activity and features?

No, I'm simply saying you can find bad features in any language. :o)

Again, I'm not saying "You have to drop what you're doing and try MS's implementation of MVC", I'm just saying, "Don't knock a horse before you try reading it."

Or however that goes.

Thanks again, great comments.

sergiotapia4• 14 years ago

I wonder why you bother posting things like this here of all places. I agree with you, I'm an MVC3 and a Rails developer - I put food on the table for my family using both (and even sometimes CakePHP).

The amount of sheer idiocy in this thread is really surprising considering the website.

It's like people see "Micro$0ft", foam at the mouth, and start rambling on about FOSS. Without even using MVC3 for anything substantial.

To compare Razor with any other view engine and say it's more or less the same is SO IGNORANT it makes my blood boil; especially since people are upvoting those same stupid remarks.

How can you compare Razor's elegant syntax with Rails really smelly view engine:

    @foreach (var person in Model.Friends)
    {
        <p>@person.Name</p>
    }

warmwaffles• 14 years ago

Can these articles please stop? There is no silver bullet solution for anything. This is why polyglot applications are starting to pop up.

brugidou• 14 years ago

.NET tooling can't compete with any unix + ruby tooling. I use .NET everyday I work with NuGet & co and it stinks. It is miles away from being mature and robust (even with VS2012).

I was a RoR dev before and loved it, now I just hate .NET at work because of it's OS (Windows) and tools (VS, NuGet, MSBuild...). We don't use MVC though.

wes-exp2• 14 years ago

I am a former C#/ASP.net programmer and I can confirm this. The thought of going back to the MS stack makes me cringe.

irahul15• 14 years ago

> tools (VS, NuGet, MSBuild...).

I don't know about NuGet or MSBuild, but back then when I used VS for misc tasks, it used to run circles around Eclipse or Netbeans.

nicholassmith2• 14 years ago

Running circles around Eclipse and Netbeans is not tricky really, they're both horrifying to use on a regular basis.

cheald3• 14 years ago

VS is a really solid IDE - one of the best available, I'd say, if it supports what you're working in.

Rails really doesn't do "IDE" well, but that's because its entire toolchain is built to be used independently of an IDE.

(Edit: There's Rubymine, which is actually pretty decent, but I usually just stick with Sublime and my console because it ends up being faster anyhow)

s_kilk• 14 years ago

As a dual-wielding RoR/.Net dev, I'm on the fence about this, on the one hand MSbuild and Nuget are a pale immitation of the tools we find in Rub/posix/foss land, but I do think VS is quite a powerful tool when held correctly. Ultimately I enjoy working in both environments, but each for differnt reasons.

btilly• 14 years ago

Disclaimer: I came to hate Microsoft back when it was first fashionable to do so. I've grown up, and still don't like them.

Here is my pet peeve.

MVC is a well-understood idea in web development that traces its inspiration back to Smalltalk in the 70s. There are many MVC frameworks in many languages, which differ in various details. All of which, to avoid confusion, called themselves things other than MVC. Examples include Catalyst, Django, Ruby on Rails, Struts, CodeIgniter and many, many more. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_f... for more.

Why did Microsoft have the gall to try to confuse everyone by calling their product MVC? Yes, you've got models, views and controllers. So does everyone else. Yours don't work exactly like anyone else's. (Everyone else's work differently from each others as well.) Yours wasn't even the first one available for .NET. Get a less confusing name.

rpeden3• 14 years ago

To be fair, they named it ASP.NET MVC, not just MVC. Considering that it is Microsoft's official MVC web framework on the ASP.NET web stack, I don't think it is an unreasonable name.

jiayo• 14 years ago

Rails calls themselves MVC: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html#the-mvc-a...

I don't see the issue with calling it "ASP.NET MVC". The Visual Basic event-driven style of programming is fundamentally different from MVC. Calling it MVC provides context.

Would you have preferred they come up with a "cute" name that doesn't explain what it is?

cheald3• 14 years ago

Rails claims to implement the MVC design patterns. It does not claim to be named "Ruby on Rails MVC".

mixmastamyk• 14 years ago

The MS stuff is good and getting better. Still, it's a (sometimes expensive) tarpit that is difficult to free yourself from. Better to not get involved in the first place, imho.

wes-exp2• 14 years ago

For the record, the MVC Framework is completely open source. So is the entire Asp.Net stack.

I'm a former C#/ASP.net programmer. This guy is delusional. Even when MS makes code available, that doesn't really mean it's useful in any practical sense. If you're targeting ASP.net, there is a 99.99% chance you're targeting Windows servers and only Windows servers. Does that sound like "open source"?

rpeden3• 14 years ago

A quick look at the ASP.NET MVC source shows that it uses the Apache license, which is OSI approved:

http://opensource.org/licenses/category

So yes, I'd say that is sounds like open source, using a very permissive license. People can (and do) deploy ASP.NET MVC apps using OSes other that Windows. The vast majority choose to deploy on Windows servers, but that does not make the source any less open.

I don't mean to come across as a Microsoft apologist; I've worked with .NET, Ruby, and Java...and find them all acceptable ways to get things done quickly, once you know what you're doing. I just feel like if we all spent less time navel gazing about whose language/tech stack is the most awesome, and spent that time creating things instead, we'd all be a lot better off.

themgt• 14 years ago

I doubt most Rails developers spend much time thinking about .NET

There's a large and growing number of useful, productive high-level languages, frameworks, databases, webservers, tooling, etc. The thing they all have in common is they're open source, they can be used on a variety of POSIX-compatible operating systems and distros, they're often used together, share underlying libraries, and help build off each other's advances.

OTOH, .NET is stuck in the walled garden it built around itself, with its fanboys trying to scream out over the walls at the rest of the world bustling by, demanding we pay them more attention.

Well sorry, no. You guys enjoy that garden though; you keep telling us how nice it is!

MattRogish• 14 years ago

Indeed. I've been a developer for about 13 years. The last 6 and change has been doing Rails and JS app development (I started out doing VC++ apps for Windows). I haven't thought about MS stack at all since about 2002. And I don't recall any presentations at RailsConf this year about .NET. No one in my circles even gives .NET a second thought.

ASP MVC may be pretty rad, but I personally hate C# (Ruby is an amazingly better language) and I don't feel like buying into the Microsoft ecosystem. It's not one that shares my values and culture, and from the outside it seems to be losing momentum and relevance. I'm not aware of many developers who would decide to adopt Rails over .NET due to these "lies" - the choice is first cultural, then technical.

I'm not suggesting that .NET shops are worse places to work (although that has been my personal experience) but there's something about the MS ecosystem that puts .NET shops at risk of turning into overly-stuffy/corporate, aesthetically-unpleasing shops. There are exceptions of course (FogCreek/StackOverflow) but they don't appear to be the norm.

irahul15• 14 years ago

> but I personally hate C# (Ruby is an amazingly better language)

I won't argue about Ruby being a better language(I like C# and Ruby and I am not inclined to pick a winner). But what version of C# have you used? If you had a brush with earlier versions of C#, I suggest you http://www.manning.com/skeet2/excerpt_contents.html read the first chapter.

dagw• 14 years ago

I personally hate C# (Ruby is an amazingly better language)

Why? I've spent the best part of the last 5 years programming python and JavaScript. Recently however a new project has shown up where I might have to use C# and I'm really excited. From what I've seen and based on the little tests I've done, C# looks like an awesome language. Striking a prefect balance between the being too dynamic and free from and being too rigid. What is it about C# that you "hate"?

dschiptsov• 14 years ago

Suggestion to use a Microsoft product to serve content or maintain a database in 2012 insults my intelligence.

pothibo• 14 years ago

I just read all the myths' title and none of them are the reason why I'm using Ruby on rails.

You like asp.NET? Good on you. It probably has interesting concepts.

I have a feeling that a large percentage of the people choosing a framework base their choice on two main characteristics:

1. Language they wish to use/learn(C#, Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, etc)

2. Framework they know/heard of (ASP.net, RoR, Flask, Django, CakePHP, Symfony, etc.)

And there's nothing wrong with that.

jhspaybar• 14 years ago

As someone who has developed in Java, .Net, PHP, Python, Node.js, and Ruby on Rails for web projects, I must say what sells me on RoR is the nature of the language and ActiveRecord. My god, ActiveRecord is AMAZING. Sometimes I just don't have the option to build something in Rails(for example building internal API's that have to be written in Java for a number of reasons), but given the choice I will choose a Ruby or RoR app every single time because of ActiveRecord and the way the language functions. I know there are lots of ActiveRecord style clones in other languages, but they just feel completely lacking when compared to the real ActiveRecord and all it's extensions.

vidarh7• 14 years ago

I find it peculiar that anyone would describe ActiveRecord that way. In my eyes it's a behind-the-curve ORM based on the most basic ORM pattern available from Fowler's "Enterprise Application Architecture", and it seems most of the people _using_ AR never read it and have not thought at all about the tradeoffs vs. other ORM patterns (such as Data Mapper ; before anyone mentions the Ruby DataMapper ORM: That one doesn't actually implement the Data Mapper pattern).

I particularly dislike the way it tends to result in code that is littered with leaky database abstractions where schema details tends to find its way into peoples controllers and views because it encourages people to call AR methods on model objects directly instead of even trying to encapsulate.

Ruby is my favorite language, but Active Record is one of the things I hold greatly against Rails, not only for AR itself, but for the inspiration it provided to many other Ruby ORM's, that while they may improve on various aspects still to a large extent also end up encouraging leaking implementation details for your models all over the place.

It'd be great if even 10% of the people using (and writing, it would seem, given that e.g. the Ruby ORM "Data Mapper" doesn't implement the Data Mapper pattern at all) these ORM's actually read the relevant chapters of EAA and pondered a bit on how it related to their applications.

irahul15• 14 years ago

> Fowler's "Enterprise Application Architecture", and it seems most of the people _using_ AR never read it

I wasn't aware Fowler is a required reading for anything(or I would say even beneficial) for _anything_, let alone AR.

> I particularly dislike the way it tends to result in code that is littered with leaky database abstractions where schema details tends to find its way into peoples controllers and views

Your whole rant doesn't have anything concrete I can respond to. How does schema details creep into controllers and views?

> because it encourages people to call AR methods on model objects directly instead of even trying to encapsulate.

Ummm. What? I don't understand. Are you proposing person.save is wrong and save should be abstracted?

> Ruby is my favorite language, but Active Record is one of the things I hold greatly against Rails, not only for AR itself, but for the inspiration it provided to many other Ruby ORM's, that while they may improve on various aspects still to a large extent also end up encouraging leaking implementation details for your models all over the place.

More rant. Still nothing concrete. AR maps the whole table, and if you are using AR, you should know that. If you need to map parts of the table, or compose parts from various tables as one object, use something else. Not every tool has to solve every problem.

utnick• 14 years ago

The big thing that rails has that .NET doesn't are the vast number of open source engines and plugins available.

For examples see here: https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/ , nothing like this really exists in the .net ecosystem, especially something akin to active record plugins, so you have to roll your own stuff a lot of the time when you could just use a plugin in rails.

Also, it seems like a lot of the useful .net stuff like mvc, nuget, entity framework are kind of clones of stuff that exist in the rails ecosystem already, so you are always going to be a bit behind the curve.

cheald3• 14 years ago

Perhaps this has changed in the last couple of years, but the last time I was in .NET land, the most glaring difference between the two was the community.

Rails, being built upon a foundation of open source, instills a strong open source ethos into its community. The amount of free, permissively-licensed open source libraries available for use with Rails is staggering. Rails' entire ecosystem, down to the preferred OS kernel, is open source and free. The buy-in to work with Rails is exactly $0. This produces a community who almost rabidly shares code and knowledge as permissively as possible.

Compare this to ASP.NET, where, until recently, there was a buy-in for everything, and you had to pony up a fair bit of cash just to play in the sandbox. In the ASP.NET world, everyone wants their $15 or $50 or $500 for every little bit of code or whatnot. The entire ecosystem feels like it's composed of people with an "enterprise" mindset who expect that everything should be paid for. This massively hampers growth of the technology and its community. It is directly antithetical to the open source ideals that have catapulted Rails to where it is today.

Any time I had tried searching for solutions to .NET problems, they were behind paywalls, behind license restrictions, or otherwise hidden away. When I search for solutions to Rails problems, they're on StackOverflow and Github. Where is the GitHub equivalent of ASP.NET MVC projects? The OP argues that the lack of SO questions is a good thing. I'd suggest that instead, perhaps it's symptomatic of the community's attitude towards distribution of knowledge.

Like I said, the last time I worked with ASP.NET was a couple of years ago, so perhaps this has changed by now, but if it has, it'd be a tectonic shift, and I'm rather doubtful that an entire ecosystem can change like that in such a relatively short amount of time.

losvedir• 14 years ago

> Myth 1: It's Easier to Bootstrap a Project In Rails

To me, "bootstrapping a project" includes source control and hosting. I absolutely adore the Rails/Heroku/GitHub trifecta.

I don't really know how this compares to what .NET MVC and VS can provide. Do they make it equally easy to get something live online with collaborators? Going to Project -> New is one thing, but only a small step in getting a project started.

Things that Ruby on Rails people tell you

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