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PHP: Laravel, Ruby: Rails, JavaScript:?

JS on May 28, 2024

Recently, there has been a heated discussion on Twitter between JS developers and Laravel and Rails developers. It started with a lengthy tweet fro...

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Yogesh Galav • May 28 • Edited

I belong from Laravel community who recently started working on node/express (because of more salary, offcourse you get more salary on complex things).
Last time I had to use Sequalize ORM with express, First I was satisfied with bunch of material available online, then I realize it's not regularly maintained, so I had to take help from my friends
and all my friends had different choice knex, objection, prisma, drizzle. Now I had to choose one friend who can help me regularly.
After I started working knex I soon realize there is no way back, because I could not replace it easily with prisma or dirzzle easily.
Now I only left with hope with god that the knex repo is regularly maintained or else I have to make heavy code shift or as the js devs will say create your own.

Kearney Taaffe • May 28

yeah, I remember when I was first developing Node + Express. I couldn't figure out what ORM to use, then I just used MS SQL client directly. no ORM. I just wrote raw SQL queries. When I got a new job and worked with Postgres...raw SQL queries no ORM.

I got a job with an existing company using Mongo...no ORM, they used Mongoose to write queries.

I don't think I've used an ORM since like 2018. I finally tried Prisma, but, I dunno, I sort of like raw SQL

Palle Simonsen • May 28

Agree Orms are good for devs that don’t get SQL and for introducing subtle bugs and supper performance. Oop is as good as dead and Orms should be a thing of the past too

Yogesh Galav • May 29

How did you use getter and setters?
What if you want to save name with first letter capital?
What if you want to add where('deleted_at', !=, null) to every place?

If OOP is dead why do js, old react, angular use classes?
Why does object prototypical inheritance exist in js?
According to you a Person, an Animal, an Employee is a function/verb?

Kearney Taaffe • May 29

save name where first letter is capitalized... stringValue.toUpperCase()

getters and setters are dead

function findActiveUsers = () => {
   const sql = `SELECT a, b, c FROM users WHERE deleted_at IS NOT NULL`
}

const rs = await doQuery(params);
return rs.filter((record) => is_null(record.deleted_at) === false)

now, you may have add the filter to a lot of places - but, that's the beauty of functional programming: you are not modifying rs and your functions stay pure.

Prototypical inheritance has been "banned" ever since MooTools, and no one does it anymore...at least they aren't supposed to.

React & Vue went functional. Angular went the opposite direction. Neither is right or wrong. But, functional patterns do away with getters/setters.

You have

const addPropToObject = (object: ObjectType, newProp, val) => {
  return {...object, newProp: val}
}

which makes it much easier to see where an object gets modified

Yogesh Galav • May 30

Can't use this findActiveUsers() for chaining sql query like scopes in eloquent.

I wouldn't prefer filter method instead of sql for production application.

Functions are performed on some entity, Can't define it for database table like user, post etc.
In Js everything is object, you can't do anything without object and full form of oop is object oriented programming. Hence there is no functional programming without object instantiation. Objects and Functions both need each other for programming in any language. So please don't give noob comments like OOP is dead.

Kearney Taaffe • May 30

A language having objects is not OOP bruh...

const createUser = () => ({A: -1, S: '',  L: '' });

This is object creation in JS. I get a distinct object on each function call. Object Instantiation is when you create a new class using the new keyword

A function should return the same value when it's called with the same arguments. OOP has a name for functions that modify state, "methods".

const createUser = () => ({A: -1, S: '',  L: '' });
const setLocation = (u, newL) => ({ ...u, L: newL });
const incrementAge = (u) => ({ ...u, A: u.A + 1 });

const main = () => {
   const john = createUser();
   setLocation(john, "Boston"); // john will never live in Boston
   incrementAge(john); // john's age is always -1

  console.log(john); // still: {A: -1, S: '',  L: '' }
}

Functions should NEVER MODIFY their parameters in ANY language. An object is immutable ALWAYS. If you want to change it's value...create a new object.

yeah, chaining is just modifying an existing object (IIRC the actual result set of the db call). Sort to the opposite of pure functional programming. Like, IIRC eloquent does a query, then another query, then sends the results of that query to another query. I remember hating Eloquent because I had a DB that used UUIDs instead of ints and getting eloquent to understand the primary key was not very easy.

OOP makes things so complicated to track down state changes. Functions are so nice
because it's explicit when there needs to be changes

Andrew Sologor • May 29

Mongoose is actually an ODM (ORM for document databases). So it's not "raw" in any way, it also allows you to define model relations and load them like in relational database ORMs.

Andrew Sologor • May 29

Check out MikroORM. It's inspired by Doctrine 2, and uses knex as a query builder.

Michael Z • May 28

I've enjoyed writing in Adonis.js more than Laravel/Rails. It has the right amount of features without the magic of Rails or the giant ecosystem of Laravel.

Andric Tham • May 28 • Edited

I think that the JS/TS ecosystem’s browser roots also means that our Laravel moment is likely to be more client-side driven rather than a “server first” MVC approach.

The local-first movement is what’s most promising to me. There are many folks trying to make headway here, and I have no doubt we’ll see a breakthrough soon and it’ll be as huge as React, node.js, and TypeScript were for the ecosystem.

As Dax Raad was saying in this recent podcast, apps architected in a local-first way results in better UX because data is consistent throughout the entire app, and interactions feel instant. All async data fetching is abstracted away into a sync engine, and developers get a better DX too by working with all state in the app as if it were local and synchronous.

So perhaps the “Laravel/Rails/Django of TypeScript” looks less like Adonis and Nest.js, and more like a batteries-included framework for building apps that seamlessly transition between the following modes, with one unifying abstraction:

server-rendered pages and queries on the first load (like Next.js and Remix)
a live, reactive, multiplayer experience via CRDTs and WebSockets (like Yjs, Automerge, Liveblocks, PartyKit, Replicache)
an offline-friendly PWA that can sync up later with a backend without conflicts (like Replicache lets you do)

We’re already seeing a glimpse of this with async state managers like React Query and SWR that cache server-side state such as to enable instant optimistic mutations and offline operation.

But these async state managers are still not reaching deep enough into the server-side to enable change data capture on the database for mutations to reactively fan out into subscribed queries from other connected clients (like Prisma Pulse lets you do) and doesn’t resolve conflicts (like Replicache lets you do). Both Prisma Pulse and Replicache also all fail on the rich text editing front, and that is currently handled by a library like Yjs or Automerge.

So for the developer, you have to manage a lot of complexity and synchronization of state all over the place. This is where a framework could really help. Just like React made it so we didn’t have to think about the complexity and intricacies of DOM manipulation, perhaps one day we won’t have to think about the complexity and intricacies of state transfer, replication, conflict resolution, and cache invalidation.

I’m optimistic that we’ll have something soon. There are a few players trying to make it happen:

Prisma seems to be coming really close to launching a local-first syncing solution. This week they made the first step in this direction by launching a local Prisma client for SQLite, for React Native.
Replicache already handles most of this and they appear to be gearing up for a bigger release (unclear what it is though)
Jazz is slowly marching toward a full-stack solution for building a local-first app, complete with authentication, permission management, and realtime text editing

Kearney Taaffe • May 28

Thanks for the article, I will definitely be checking out ZenStack. I come from Laravel/Symfony. Honestly, every developer seems to be missing the BEST points of Node. It has a consistent API to represent a Request object, and a consistent API to represent a Response object.

I switched from Laravel to Express. Express using Jade. I did everything that I could do in Laravel with Express and Jade.

These people that are re-inventing the wheel with React + React Server components, it just blows my mind that they are forgetting Express + Jade. Now, PUG may not be as cool, but you can certainly make PUG files and include React components in them.

Node already has a Laravel, Rails killer...people just forget because it's apparently not cool

Rasmus Schultz • May 29

I don't even understand why developers want this. You want someone else to make all your dependency choices and software architecture decisions, why? You want a base install of 500,000 lines of code, thousands of dependencies which, not even really knowing what half of it is, you think maybe you might need some of it some day?

You actually want a framework so big and integrated and opinionated about everything that it becomes just a black box, where you follow the manual, fill in the blanks where designated, painting by numbers, never really understanding much beyond "pulling this handle makes the machine go bling"?

You want everything you write to be proprietary and locked into your framework? You want software that couples everything to everything, breaking every piece of good software advice ever given about modularity and decoupling - and it's somehow okay to do that, because "it's the framework"?

JS is one of the last software ecosystems where you still get to build simple things and use your head. PHP used to be that, but it's pretty much over since Laravel.

I understand why some people need that - if your job is a software production line, I understand the benefits of everything being highly streamlined, being able to churn out as much code as possible for the next client as quickly and cheaply as possible.

But the rest of the industry really should ask themselves why they want this, make sure they need it, and make sure it's not just this. (it usually is.)

axmad386 • Jun 4 • Edited

The problem with js developers are they don't like to use current technology. They keep create their own, especially for orm. You cannot force js devs to use one of your favorite orm. Some of them love to use typescript, some of them hate it, some of them love to overuse decorator, some of them like functional approach.
That's why I create my own nodejs framework 😬😂
lunox.js.org
I am not creating any new orm, just try to create adapter one for them. I use it for personal only, so I can switch from one orm to other orm depends on my team 😅

Btw I am Laravel devs, but falling in love with typescript

Martin Šošić • May 29

He forgot to mention Wasp! Really full-stack, even captures the database, unique approach with its own DSL for config (similar like RoR has a DSL for routes), can't really get more full stack than that. Redwood is quite close, and Blitz, but those are kind of slowing down recently and Wasp is catching up in strides.