[agibsonccc]

I think one notable thing to observe with any of these frameworks is that backends as REST APIs with a javascript heavy front end are becoming more common.

Many of these frameworks won't disappear but I think adapt to the newer trends.

Whether we like it or not java is still here and used, I don't see why rails and django won't be.

The whole point of software is it evolves. These projects both have enough of a following to receive updates to fit those new paradigms.

They may not be as suited for something built from the ground up for that specific use case, but that doesn't mean they will disappear.

[webjprgm]

I worked on a project not long ago that used Rails to serve up purely JSON via a REST API and the front-end was all Ember and Coffeescript. (Coffeescript because an intern started prototyping part of the UI in it, and we all figured it'd be fun to learn. I'm not sold on it though.)

We designed our JSON model differently than Ember Data expected, though, so we basically had to make our own Ruby GEMs and EmberData adapter. But with those in place it's fairly easy to use Ruby as just a back end.

[agibsonccc]

Exactly. I think a lot of web developers could easily find a transition to that model.

There's a lot of great libraries out there for this use case. Not surprised you had to do a bit of customizing though.

I think over time this will be come easier if not baked in to the frameworks themselves.

[cpursley]

Interesting. How did you like the Ember/Rails combo?

Were you using the Rails asset-pipeline to server the Ember app, or did you separate the Ember app (served statically and hitting API)?

[dragonwriter]

> I think one notable thing to observe with any of these frameworks is that backends as REST APIs with a javascript heavy front end are becoming more common.

Backends as HTTP APIs with a javascript heavy front end are becoming very common; REST, not as much, though it seems to be popular now to call any non-SOAP HTTP API a "REST API".

[lhc-]

Django is already pretty good at this with plugins like Tastypie. At my current job our backend is Django + Tastypie and just provides a REST API to an Ext.js frontend.