[adamtaylor_13]

Rails is experiencing something of a renaissance in recent years. It’s easily one of the most pleasant programming experiences I’ve had in years.

All my new projects will be Rails. (What about projects that don’t lend themselves to Rails? I don’t take on such projects ;)

[cship2]

Hmm I thought Crystal was suppose to be faster Ruby? No?

[mbb70]

No one uses Ruby because it is fast. They use it because it is an ergonomic language with a battle-tested package for every webserver based activity you can code up.

[brigandish]

> No one uses Ruby because it is fast.

Well, because it isn't.

Crystal is an ergonomic language, too, looking a lot like Ruby even beyond a cursory glance. What Ruby has, like any longstanding language, is a large number of packages to help development along, so languages like Crystal have to do a lot of catching up. Looking at the large number of abandoned gems though, I'm not sure it's that big a difference, the most important ones could be targeted.

I'm not sure that has any relevance when compared with Python or JS or Go though, they seem to have thriving ecosystems too - is Rails really that much better than the alternatives? I wouldn't know but I highly doubt it.

[the_gastropod]

> is Rails really that much better than the alternatives?

I really think so. I've _looked_. I've tried all sorts of other web frameworks. And, admittedly, I am most familiar with Rails, so I'm maybe a bit biased. But it's hard to find anything that comes particularly close to the productivity of using Rails. The tooling's great, the ecosystem is great, it's organized well, the documentation is good. It's just... really a pleasant experience to use.

Elixir's Phoenix comes pretty close, as does PHP's Laravel, imo. Special shout out for Rust's Loco, too, which is relatively new, but looking potentially promising.

I recommend giving Rails an open-minded tire kicking. I think you'll be surprised by how quickly you can get going.

[brigandish]

I've used Rails (I've possibly committed to it, though I've forgotten if I have), my point is that I don't know those other languages' frameworks well enough to judge the difference, but I don't see any complaints.

You even seem to admit as much while being most familiar with Rails. Do you know anyone who'd love to switch over? Or would you choose it ahead of a competitor if you were green? There'd have to be a large competitive advantage.

[adamtaylor_13]

I’d jump ship if there was a mature, stable competitor in the Typescript ecosystem.

Unfortunately I think language differences mean it’s going to be a long time before anyone catches up. Ruby just makes for some really interesting wizardry that as far as I can tell isn’t possible (or perhaps not as ergonomic?) in Typescript.

Furthermore there seems to be a cultural difference. I haven’t met many JS devs who came to the Ruby side and were like, “Aw shit this is better.” (I’m one such dev, but I hated Ruby and Rails for a really long time before I changed my opinion and embraced it.)

But at this point in my career I value stable boring technology way more than my personal taste du-jour so I code in Ruby and really love Rails.

[ksec]

I am still hoping once Crystal stabilise on Windows ( Currently it still feels very much beta ). They could work on making compiling speed faster and incremental compiling.

[Alifatisk]

> Crystal was suppose to be faster Ruby

No, it never intended to be a replacement to Ruby. They share similarities in syntax, the same way Elixirs syntax reminds you of Ruby.

If you want faster Ruby, check out MRuby (not always an drop-in replacement though).