[Lukas_Skywalker]

> Isn't that's just having a property/field on a struct/class/type/object that contains the list of tags?

I have never used the library, but it seems you get a lot more with just 2-3 lines of configuration (e.g. for a tag context named „interests“):

- The ability to find the n most or least used tags with a single method call - The ability to track which user tagged a record - The ability to find records with the same tags - Calculation of tag statistics for a tag cloud

Now, all that would certainly be possible with EF. But many libraries for Rails give developers a very simple way to configure a feature, and deliver very expressive methods to use the feature. Which is an important property imo, since it often makes obvious what the code does, even for newcomers.

This is probably an effect from Ruby itself, where the standard library is quite expansive and has many often-used patterns built in. For example, calculating an arrays maximum value is just

    arr = [1,2,3,4]
    arr.max

Meanwhile, in JS:

    arr = [1,2,3,4]
    let max = arr[0];
    for (let i = 1; i < arr.length; i++) {
        if (arr[i] > max) max = arr[i];
    }

And to address the README of the above library: I think it is a bit confusing because it starts with a comparison with another library, expecting readers to already know how tagging worked there.

[Tainnor]

> - The ability to find the n most or least used tags with a single method call - The ability to track which user tagged a record - The ability to find records with the same tags - Calculation of tag statistics for a tag cloud

What's the chance that this is the exact set of features that you're gonna need and not a slightly different set of features? E.g. maybe your users are part of teams and you need to know which tags were set by a given team? Or maybe your tags are hierarchical? Will the library be flexible enough to accommodate that?

It just seems that this library makes a lot of assumptions about the business logic of your application - but that can change at any point and then you're possibly stuck with a library that you have to weirdly workaround, or rip out entirely.

I would understand that tradeoff if the library solved an actually complex use case, but every competent developer should know how to implement these use cases from scratch in a relatively short amount of time, and while it undoubtedly takes longer than just adding 2-3 lines of config, what you get in return is code that you own and understand and can modify in whatever way you want.

[neonsunset]

The following is probably going to be a closer comparison:

  let arr = [1, 2, 3, 4];
  let max = arr.reduce((a, b) => Math.max(a, b));

Or C# and Rust (which will be >100x faster at finding max value[0][1]):

  var arr = new[] { 1, 2, 3, 4 };
  var max = arr.Max();

  let arr = [1, 2, 3, 5];
  let max = arr.iter().max();

Ruby does nail the minimalism in this code golfing example, but it does not offers uniquely high productivity to the end user, which is a frequently brought up point in defense of interpreted languages whenever their shortcomings are mentioned. Lacking static typing, Ruby users have to resort on e.g. Sorbet, which is a worse experience and numerous comments on HN seem to provide negative feedback on it.

I do actually hate to mention performance every time, but it's difficult to not do so when apples-to-apples comparison can be made. Compiled statically typed languages with GC offer similar or better (because the code is verified by compiler, not Sorbet) productivity without any of the drawbacks that come with Ruby.

This is to illustrate the point about the languages that do come with rich standard library, that also happen to go to great lengths at ensuring that shortest way to express something is also the fastest whenever possible.

[0]: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/src/libraries/Sy...

[1]: https://godbolt.org/z/srfWE9qcE

(the >100x figure is not an exaggeration)

[nvlled]

Not disagreeing with your overall point, but JS can also do it more succintly:

  [1,2,3,4].reduce((a,b) => Math.max(a,b),100)
  // or
  Math.max(...[1,2,3,4])