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Discussion on: Pitch me on the pros and cons of your preferred web app framework

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jzombie profile image
jzombie

Do the cons outweigh the pros? They sound pretty hard hitting.

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codewander profile image
codewander

Not "native" to some cool new ways of building web apps

I don't understand this one - reference to isomorphic, blitz, serverless, something else?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I'm speaking generally to Rails not coming up in an era where, say, GraphQL exists. Sure, there is plenty of support here, but there are also frameworks which really build around this technology as a first-class citizen.

I think it's the general downfall of being around longer and having to support more things. If you really want to go in on a more novel approach to web app development, you may want to go with something that is really designed directly to build around that approach.

I'm a Rails dev myself, full stop, but it's very much general purpose, and if you know you have a need for a different approach that's going to get support from the whole ecosystem, you may want to look elsewhere.

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codewander profile image
codewander

I have been slowly heading from haskell -> scala -> golang (~ few months) -> rails API (this month) over the last six years. I don't see graphql's applicability to a typical backend for frontend scenario. I think its great for build a public facing API, if you are building an API product, where you don't have access to all your potential clients. I may be proved wrong though. So, I don't see anything really missing in the default Rails API approach.

I am slightly concerned that the default recommendation is Turbo, rather than emphasizing React + Rails API, but I don't think it matters that much.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I am slightly concerned that the default recommendation is Turbo

I'm especially concerned given the last point of "DHH drama" since Turbo is still pretty darn immature. It's so much still his pet project and it's just not great if the community isn't acting in a super cohesive way on these things.

Of course, all the stakeholders in Rails aren't going to let this become that much of an actual problem, but it still poses a risk to the direction of the ecosystem. I'd like to think everyone is rowing in the same direction, but I'm not sure that's totally happening at the moment.

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codewander profile image
codewander • Edited

On the plus side, I was skeptical about turbo working out well on a static site and it has performed well, decent lighthouse scores. I know static sites are a niche area relative to a regular web UI frontend.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

It's pretty easy to point out what's wrong with Rails, but it's still so well loved for a reason. People who get used to working in it tend to be very productive and happy.

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jzombie profile image
jzombie • Edited

I was mostly curious is all.

I develop a lot w/ JS and I think the cons are rooted in so many libraries defining their own ad-hoc type systems (i.e. JS itself [and TypeScript] one way, Apollo [GraphQL] another way, React prop-types another way, any object validation tool another way, etc.).