Does anyone who USES Rails hate Rails?

[Stedwick]

I was reading this: http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/666i4/comments/
and there's no denying it; lots of people HATE Ruby on Rails.

However, I've never met anyone who actually USES it who hates it. All
the people who rag on about how much RoR sucks seem as though they've
never used it.

Is this an accurate observation?

I have to admit, I understand where they are coming from. I USED to
hate RoR, before I tried it. I hated the magic, I hated that I couldnt
just "up-and-go" like with PHP. I didn't understand that "everything
is an object." The documentation sucked.

In fact, a tried to learn RoR a year ago, and I gave up cursing and
swearing how stupid it was and went back to PHP. But I didn't give up.

About 6 months ago I grabbed the AWDWR book, read it cover to cover,
actually began to UNDERSTAND Rails, and once I "got" it now I love it!

I feel it's like Vim. "MODAL editing? F that." You have to change your
whole perspective on how web programming works, and most people just
aren't willing to do that. Even if the "rails way" is better, no one
wants to abandon the "old way".

Finally, the criticism that Rails is slow...well...that doesn't even
matter unless you are serving up millions of hits a day or whatever,
and when that happens just mongrel it up and stuff, so who really
cares? I mean, maybe Google which serves like 7 billion zillion hits a
second might have to worry about Ruby's slowness and go with Python
instead, but really, the rest of the world shouldn't care too much.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

Stedwick

[MrLipid]

I use Rails. Took a while to understand it. Now I love it. Nothing
like stunning a client by assembling an app in hours rather than days.

[ressister]

It's quite easy (and quick) to get the basics down, but I find that
the "magic" of rails sometimes obfuscates what's going on making it
much harder to figure out som simple things. It's also hard to get
the hang of the framework if you're a hack developer coming from a
language like PHP. I'm almost two years in and still learning, and
while I still find it frustrating, I love it.

-A

[Ryan Bigg (Radar)]

Why would somebody who uses the language, hate the language? If they hated the language they wouldn't be using it unless they're getting paid a crap load of money to do so.

[matt mitchell]

I came from 7 years of PHP. And to be honest, Rails wasn't hard for
me. I started out with OOP, not procedurla. See I can't even spell
it.. I was already very aware of the patterns that Rails uses. I was
reading up on Martin Fowler's patterns and taking part in the many,
brilliant posts over at Sitepoints advanced PHP forum. Rails is just
taking common sense, tried and true experience, and binding it with
the greatest language ever created. :) I've been using Rails
extensively for a while and I love it! I'll never look back.

[Richard]

Hi All,

> Why would somebody who uses the language, hate the language? If they hated

> the language they wouldn't be using it ...

Well, there's "uses" and "USES". When I first started with Rails, I
followed PickAxe step by step just to get a Rails project working so I
could get a feel for it. But, at the time, I felt there were too many
details being offered to allow me to sense the Gestalt.

But having that intro, I went to Black's Ruby for Rails. I liked
that a lot better, but there was still to much "stuff" there to suit
me.

Thus armed with some Thomas and Black, I went to the Ruby Cookbook,
and liked that even better.

By that time, I figured I didn't know enough Ruby, like closures for
instance, so I backed off Rails for a while.

Now I've picked up "Pro Active Record" and "The Rails Way". With all
that stuff, I'm ready to go back to Rails.

Fortunately, I'm retired, so I can take a meandering path to getting
to love Rails. But I think I'll take on client with needs for a rich
website that Rails will facilitate in developing. When that succeeds
as well as I expect, then I'll be USING Rails and I'll love it.

Regards,
Richard


On Feb 24, 6:40 pm, "Ryan Bigg (Radar)" <radarliste...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Rustam Mamat]

i have newbie for most of the programming languages ,among these
language rubyonrails is really easy to learn compare to other."Love at
the first sight" anyone who tries to use rubyonrails will fall love with
it.the best way to hate this languange is that not to touch it :).i
guess most of the user of rubyonrails have same feeling with me .

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[David A. Black]

Hi --

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Richard wrote:

>
> Hi All,
>
>> Why would somebody who uses the language, hate the language? If they hated
>> the language they wouldn't be using it ...
>
> Well, there's "uses" and "USES". When I first started with Rails, I
> followed PickAxe step by step just to get a Rails project working so I
> could get a feel for it. But, at the time, I felt there were too many
> details being offered to allow me to sense the Gestalt.
>
> But having that intro, I went to Black's Ruby for Rails. I liked
> that a lot better, but there was still to much "stuff" there to suit
> me.
>
> Thus armed with some Thomas and Black, I went to the Ruby Cookbook,
> and liked that even better.
>
> By that time, I figured I didn't know enough Ruby, like closures for
> instance, so I backed off Rails for a while.

Hey, I talk about closures on pp. 352-353 :-)

I'm all for getting the composite picture, nonetheless.

David

--
Upcoming Rails training from David A. Black and Ruby Power and Light:
ADVANCING WITH RAILS, April 14-17 2008, New York City
CORE RAILS, June 24-27 2008, London (Skills Matter)
See http://www.rubypal.com for details, and stay
tuned for dates in Berlin!

[Shandy Nantz]

I got hired with my boss specifically asking me if I had ever used
rails? I replied that "I haven't even heard of it." But he still hired
me and I had to learn to use it and it has been relatively easy. Long
story short, I love RoR. I figurte I can do the work of three PHP
programmers using it.

-S

[Oldtimer]

On 25 Feb., 03:28, Rustam Mamat <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>
wrote:

> "Love at the first sight" anyone who tries to use rubyonrails will fall love with
> it.the best way to hate this languange is that not to touch it :).i
> guess most of the user of rubyonrails have same feeling with me .

absolutely right

tried many different languages/frameworks but could resist every
"temptation" - until Ruby came along ;-)

and Rails? The perfect marriage of

> common sense, tried and true experience

the incarnation of KISS - the smart version: keep it simple and
smart...

SOA? Don't talk about it, just do it! (Ares be thanked ;-) )

b4

[quigebo]

use it long enough and you start to realize the limitations of Rails.
Ruby is DAMN sexy. Rails is cool. I used to LOVE rails and now its
just o.k. The rails core developers seem pretty damn cocky in my
opinion. The guys behind Django seem a bit more down to earth -- maybe
success has just gotten to their heads? Oh well. Note: I still use
Rails for ALL of my projects. Take a look at other frameworks though.
Ramaze, Camping just to see what else is out there. Don't let the
Rails frenzy blind you to everything else thats out there

[Neil Wilson]

Largely. Rails is very, very good if you are operating in Rails' sweet
spot - loosely connected flat entity databases and a pretty front end
web site that is mostly design and display and little interaction. The
classic being the 'weblog' application that (irritatingly) shows up in
practically every example of Rails in action.

Where it starts to run out of steam is when you need to do more than
that - at which point you have to drop back to Ruby and start writing
software for real rather than simply 'configuring a framework'.

However because the Rails framework *is* a proper Ruby application
written by people who mostly know how to program then building the
extensions isn't as painful as it often is with other framework
solutions. But basic reporting is hard work, and the web form widgets
are pretty low level. And of course everybody knows about the
challenges of authentication.

As Vader would say 'The Web is strong with you young framework, but
you are not a 4GL yet'.

NeilW

[Richard]

Hi David,

> Hey, I talk about closures on pp. 352-353 :-)

Well, said! Mea culpa :-)

Actually, I loved your book. It got me going with my first (and
only, so far) client for a website. Sadly, it ended, because I broke
my arm (playing tennis with my daughter). I was unwilling to endure
the discomfort I'd suffer continuing on that project.

My experience is that if a newbee really wants to really KNOW Rails,
he/she must accept the fact that this is a big topic. It's akin to
becoming an ace in Mathematics (which is my academic background).
It's a long road, and traveling it is what it takes to LOVE Rails
IMHO.

I've also got:
- Ruby on Rails E-Commence
- RESTful Web Services
- Pro Active Record
- Practical Ruby Gems
- The Rails Way
and a few more (none of which I've read even halfway).

I browse all of them, depending on the problems I encounter. I'm
done with my Ruby study, for now, and I'm back to Rails.

I grateful for the efforts you and the other authors for taking time
to help educate us, the "unwashed" but ambitious. I don't imagine
that any of you have been adequately compensated financially for the
Herculean effort required to write your books. But I hope that the
satisfaction in helping us, your readers, bridges the gap.

Best wishes,
Richard

> Seehttp://www.rubypal.comfor details, and stay

[Molly Cat]

I am no fan of it.. I've been stranded in it for over a year now and i
still loath it. I have to stay because the job looks like crud on my
CV, and when people ask me what i've doing i have to say Rails. Then
the interview switches to developing in Rails, and i can see a whole new
world of joy ;)

Why i hate the framework for two reasons... 1 it touts ease and people
say (all over) that they can create apps in hours. The language is in
no way easier than c++ or java. The logic and math is the same..
Setting things up to scale is no easier. To be honest many things are
significantly harder than java and c++.. At least when you want you
want to make things really perform. Which brings me to the second bit
of reason 1. The apps that get built in an hour, only amaze people who
have no idea what programming is. Why this makes me not like it?
Because my bosses, and their clients hear the bit about easy, and fast
and budget according to this. I have to fight with each new feature.

The second reason that i dislike the framework is because it lowers the
bar too much. So much so that samples one finds when learning the
framework, they are often shown code that is bad in so many ways it
hurts my brain to think of it... But then the same people who produced
the samples say "well its just one way to do it". The low entry breads
lazy coders.. And they stay ignorant.

Ok. So now i sound like a real hater.. Here's the good of it. For small
low volume sites rails can get the job done. Rails sits on ruby, and
ruby sits on c. All the power one needs can be found.

[Molly Cat]

I have been in it for over a year. Coming off c and c++ for 10 years, I
don't consider myself an amature coder.
I do not really HATE it, but i do think it is overhyped,and i definitely
don't like it...

Its just a library that sits on something real, no better than swing or
STL (a might sight less IMHO)
Active records are slow as, and foster rather lazy coders.
Finish an app in a few hours... Rubish! My boss believed this, and his
cliets believed it. The language is easy. Productivity will go through
the roof.. Bahha haa. There are no silver bullets and 60 hour weeks
with unreal deadlines ensued.

I dont hate the framework, but i wish my boss had picked java.

Oh. To those who say i should quit. Fab idea, but when asked what
have i been doing for the past year. Well i never get past the gate
keepers.

[Peter Hickman]

On 1 May 2013 12:10, Molly Cat <li...@ruby-forum.com> wrote:

I am no fan of it..  I've been stranded in it for over a year now and i
still loath it.   I have to stay because the job looks like crud on my
CV, and when people ask me what i've doing i have to say Rails.   Then
the interview switches to developing in Rails, and i can see a whole new
world of joy ;)

If you have ten years of C/C++ you don't have to apply for Rails jobs. Just apply for C/C++ jobs and when they ask why you did Rails just tell them you felt like a change but it didn't work out. Lets face it 10 years of C/C++ should be most impressive. But you will have to articulate your dislike of Rails in a considerably more professional way than you are expressing it here. To be honest you sound like a whiner. You didn't get on with Rails, big deal. I didn't get on with Java despite doing it for a few years. I just politely decline Java jobs and thank them for their interest.

Don't let it fester, it will eat you alive.

 

Why i hate the framework for two reasons...  1 it touts ease and people
say (all over) that they can create apps in hours.   The language is in
no way easier than c++ or java.

This is odd. Ruby is generally considerably easier than either Java or C++ because there are less things to actually do. In Ruby a class is a class, in Java and C++ you have static classes, abstract classes so there are more design decisions and the application source gets longer. In Ruby the methods are either public, protected, private or class methods. Again less decisions and less code to type.

Maybe dynamic languages are not your thing. Fine. No problem. Java is not my thing but I'm ok with C and C++. People are different.

 

 The logic and math is the same..
Setting things up to scale is no easier.  To be honest many things are
significantly harder than java and c++..  At least when you want you
want to make things really perform.  Which brings me to the second bit
of reason 1.  The apps that get built in an hour, only amaze people who
have no idea what programming is.  Why this makes me not like it?
Because my bosses, and their clients hear the bit about easy, and fast
and budget according to this.   I have to fight with each new feature.

Ruby and Rails can indeed develop applications very quickly. But the code on the whole is quite shallow and amenable to refactoring. You tell the client that something can be put together very quickly but should they want it extended in ways that were not part of the original design it could take longer than they think. Perhaps the issue here is that you are trying to apply BIG APPLICATION development practices from java and C++ in an environment where Agile or XP would be better suited. It is not a coincidence that the Ruby and Rails communities embraced Agile and XP, or at least iterative development.

If I were to apply my mainframe COBOL or Fortran development practices to our Rails applications it would indeed be a world of pain.

 

The second reason that i dislike the framework is because it lowers the
bar too much.

So what you are saying is that you can't stand the heat. Too much competition and you have no way of showing how much better a programmer than all these other guys who are actually interested in Rails.

The statement actually contradicts you earlier statement "To be honest many things are significantly harder than java and c++" and the later statement "The low entry breads lazy coders..  And they stay ignorant". How can it lower the bar, which I assume you mean allows a lower quality of programmer to take work from you, and be harder than Java and C++. Those are some shit hot lazy bastards you got there. Send a few of them my way, my developers have only one Phd between them :)

 

So much so that samples one finds when learning the
framework, they are often shown code that is bad in so many ways it
hurts my brain to think of it...  But then the same people who produced
the samples say "well its just one way to do it".  The low entry breads
lazy coders..  And they stay ignorant.

Ok. So now i sound like a real hater..  Here's the good of it. For small
low volume sites rails can get the job done.  Rails sits on ruby, and
ruby sits on c.   All the power one needs can be found.

Well Java only sits on C so doesn't the same apply here?

At one point C++ was just a preprocessor that kicked out C code so that puts C++ in the same category as Ruby then :) 

You need to leave that job solely for the sake of you mental health.

[Wins Lin]

My opinion: Sometimes Rails is good, sometimes it is ugly.

YAML has to be thrown away, but they force you to use it.

File names in lower_case_letters ARE HORRIBLE.

Rails is for monkeys, not for real developers. Even a monkey after some
training can develop Rails. You may forget the base technologies with
Rails which I think is bad.

AR forces you NEVER to use raw SQL. They just force you. There is no
simple prepare_sql method. How it can be? See this answer
http://stackoverflow.com/a/16125655/1114926

Template language is horrible after unbelievably convenient php's "<?php
echo
"<div> anything </div> ?>"

And all those begin end begin end end end. But it is not Rails it is
Ruby, of course. But...

This is what came in my mind just at the moment.

[Bigos]

I hate Rails sometimes. Now and then I have a feeling that using Rails is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. For example Active record doesn't fit my every need and sometimes I have to use SQL. Because I use Rails I have lost much of my SQL skills. Last time I had some unusual problem it took me 6 hours to write a query. It seems that I modify problems to fit them into Rails instead of modifying Rails to adapt it to my problems.

[Wins Lin]

Jacek Podkanski wrote in post #1107534:

> It seems that I modify
> problems to fit them into Rails instead of modifying Rails to adapt it
> to my problems.

Well said. 100% right.

[Matt Jones]

On Thursday, 2 May 2013 05:19:17 UTC-4, Bigos wrote:

I hate Rails sometimes. Now and then I have a feeling that using Rails is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. For example Active record doesn't fit my every need and sometimes I have to use SQL. Because I use Rails I have lost much of my SQL skills. Last time I had some unusual problem it took me 6 hours to write a query. It seems that I modify problems to fit them into Rails instead of modifying Rails to adapt it to my problems.

Similarly, I've found that using C has really weakened my assembler skills. (trollface)

--Matt Jones 

[gsw]

On Thursday, May 2, 2013 5:19:17 AM UTC-4, Bigos wrote:

I hate Rails sometimes. Now and then I have a feeling that using Rails is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. For example Active record doesn't fit my every need and sometimes I have to use SQL. Because I use Rails I have lost much of my SQL skills. Last time I had some unusual problem it took me 6 hours to write a query. It seems that I modify problems to fit them into Rails instead of modifying Rails to adapt it to my problems.

I understand what you are saying, but this is not correct. I know of a company that runs on Rails that is *heavy* into SQL for optimization. What you said could be applied as much to Rails and ActiveRecord ORM as it could be to Hibernate, EclipseLink, etc.

I think this whole topic of Rails bashing is a bit misguided. I worked in Java for many years and Ruby (CRuby/JRuby/Rails/Sinatra/etc.) also the last several years, I can say that there were definitely periods of time where I've wanted to bash my head into my desk. But, if you stick with it, it will treat you well.

I also see some are complaining about having to do things "the Rails(tm) way". Sure, it makes things easier, but it doesn't stop you, and in the case of legacy integration (we run alongside a substantial Java service-oriented environment that's fairly complex along with other legacy apps/services/webapps), I just wrote some gems to handle things that we needed, so others in the same situation won't have to go through as much trouble:
https://github.com/garysweaver?tab=repositories

Of course, the first thing to do is to search around and make use of what others are already offering. Keeping up with that is more difficult than almost any other part of my job. :)

[Colin Law]

On 2 May 2013 13:18, Wins Lin <li...@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
> Jacek Podkanski wrote in post #1107534:
>
>> It seems that I modify
>> problems to fit them into Rails instead of modifying Rails to adapt it
>> to my problems.
>
> Well said. 100% right.

Wins Lin: how long have you been using Rails?

Colin

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[Wins Lin]

Colin Law wrote in post #1107600:

> On 2 May 2013 13:18, Wins Lin <li...@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
>> Jacek Podkanski wrote in post #1107534:
>>
>>> It seems that I modify
>>> problems to fit them into Rails instead of modifying Rails to adapt it
>>> to my problems.
>>
>> Well said. 100% right.
>
> Wins Lin: how long have you been using Rails?

4 month. Both Ruby and Rails. Previous experience 1.5 years in PHP, Zend
Framework 1 and 2, was testing Python + Django. And after ZF Rails to
me:
1) is complicated
2) is occasionally comfortless
3) source code and its organisation is incomprehensible and scary
4) I cannot make any step right or left. Use only what is offered and as
written in their guide and API.

But I hope, yes I hope that this will pass when I gain more experience.
But for now I can say for sure that I wouldn't develop my own project in
Ruby and Rails. Don't understand why people around want their projects
in Rails. The only explanation (imo) is a good marketing.

[Julian Leviston]

Hehe.

It's not Rails that's a problem here, per-se, it's ORMs that the OP seems to have a problem with - shaping his application architecture choices. Maybe he should be using MagLev and therefore Gemstone ;-)

I agree that ORMs tend to make you think un-object-orientedly sometimes... but usually they can be worked around, and they provide a good pragmatic "best fit" for most uses. It's pretty darn good for free!

Julian

[Anna Lissa Cruz]

I've been using Rails since 2004 and still love it.  I understand a lot of the complaints about Rails and may have occasionally voiced my dislike as well.  However, the complaints I often hear about Rails has more to do with the kind of coders/people the framework seems to attract than the actual framework itself.  By itself, Rails is an easy to use MVC framework which can help you get a website running quickly.  It's well-designed and modular.  It's built on top of a great language, Ruby.

Really, Rails is just like any other tool.  In the hands of a third-grader, a pen can create a a bona fide mess.  In the hands of an artist, it can create something inspiring.

[Emil S]

> I agree that ORMs tend to make you think un-object-orientedly sometimes

Isn't the primary purpose of ORM to provide an object oriented way of dealing with your data ?

I've been using Rails for 4 years, and I don't complain. I can ask an absolute beginner in rails to build something for me, and I still get fairly modularised code thanks to the conventions, which make things suck less for the beginners. I agree novice programmers using Rails find the framework an excuse to write code without thinking about important things like SOLID principles. But I guess that's better than a beginner writing code without a framework and not thinking about SOLID. For me, the conventions are not obstacles, most of the time they help me from going astray. If there's something that doesn't fit my needs, I can always write my own piece of code.  From my experience, a frustrated day at work would usually be caused by bad programming and rarely the framework.