[tjlivesey]

>However, a lot of people I talk to are moving to pure JS front-end + REST backend. In this world Rails doesn't deliver any particular value (in my opinion).

I agree with this but I think there is a place for a javascript framework tied fairly closely to Rails. Possibly ember.js since the attitude towards both seems similarly opinionated and Yehuda Katz is one of the ember team. The Rails API gem accommodates this quite nicely as well although one of the benefits of Rails' modular design is that you can lose lots of the stuff you don't need if you are only building a REST API. Maybe this is the future of Rails?

[steveklabnik]

I maintain rails-api, and both Yehuda and I have commit to Rails. I just want to mention that while Ember + Rails will be a potent combo, Ember will work great with non-Rails backends as well, and rails-api will work great with other frameworks too. That said, we're working really hard to make sure that Rails 4 + rails-api + Ember 1.0 is a fantastic experience, so watch that space for sure.

[tjlivesey]

Thanks for all the hard work Steve. I have been waiting for ember 1.0 to really give it a proper go but I'm looking forward to it. It seems like a slightly steeper learning curve than something like backbone but I'm sure it will do more for you once you get to grips with it.

[steveklabnik]

<3

The peepcode on Ember is really worth the $12, it's a great introduction. I really believe in what Ember is doing quite a bit.

As far as Ember vs. Backbone, it's like Rails vs. Sinatra: Backbone is 'easier' but then you have to write a ton of stuff yourself. Ember has more going on, but you write a lot less code.

But where Ember really shines is the way it deals with URIs and routing. I think it's super far ahead of other JS frameworks in this respect, and I hope routing.js sees some pickup.