While I do echo some of the sentiments of the author, I still LOVE Ruby. I use it for small scale projects, for very quick data processing needs or on Jupyter notebooks. I used to run a full fledged Ruby shop a year or two ago and I have to tell you, in this day and age, even today, there is NO full-fledged equivalent to Rails.
Having said that, now I predominantly use Phoenix/Elixir for most new projects. And the framework is moving ahead blazing fast. It has its own pros and cons, but overall, it's been a VERY positive experience and it actually saves me a LOT of time because I'm able to find code errors at compile time.
It's almost the only alternative to Rails which seems like home if you're transitioning, but it still has its own issues. For example, they screwed up the code organization with contexts, renamed the web folder a couple of times and so on. But these are small issues and I'm amazed at the productivity I gained by using Phoenix.
I wrote a full fledged Stripe API library in under 12 hours. Well tested and rock solid. Pattern matching is heaven and in many ways, your code is more robust. I have written libraries in Ruby too, they take more time simply because there are lot more tests that need to be written.
I would never go as far as saying "I'm sick of Ruby", simply because it's still a great programming language, if you're getting started and also because, I believe in the man behind it - Matz. He has a philosophy and believes in it. It takes enormous passion and dedication to believe in what you've created, support it over decade(s) and keep on improving it. I can point you many languages that have died over the years because they lacked this passion and dedication.
Same thing goes for DHH as well. I really applaud him for patiently tolerating so many people bashing the framework he helped to create that revolutionized web development. He's also very very chill and respectful about others' opinions. [1]
Having said all this, I hope Ruby 3.0 has a strong come back which is much needed at the moment.
> renamed the web folder a couple of times and so on
Just to add a bit of information to this, they were all in RC or pre-releases. I was bitten by this myself, but if you choose to run RC code then you need to own that a little bit.
I don't have any idea how it looks nowadays, but Rails 1.0 wasn't that big deal, because already in the Tcl days there were Rails like application servers being written.
Like AOLServer, Vignette and our very own at the startup I was working on during the first .com wave.
The big deal was that many developers weren't aware of such stacks.
I think the killer feature for a lot of developers when Rails came around was the ORM. IIRC AolServer didn't have an equivalent to ActiveRecord, and never having to touch SQL or know a lot about database design was a big boon for the kind of developer who got into RoR. The rest was mostly more magical PHP.
AolServer might not had one, but Vignette and our in-house solution surely did.
You would declare an "entity" type and all CRUD operations would be automatically generated for Informix, MS SQL Server, Sybase SQL Server, Oracle and DB 2.
With the possibility of extending with extra queries that look like entity methods.
Most ORMs I dealt with at the time were strict code generation from configuration or db introspection, so there was essentially a 'compilation step'. What AR had at the time was you extended a base class and directed it to a database and your objects magically figured everything else out. Change a table schema and refresh _only_ your browser and the new state was reflected in your application. That was a very magical in 2006 and having a fully working ORM with 2-6 lines of _code_ (not configuration) per schema+relationship was incredible.
Having said that, now I predominantly use Phoenix/Elixir for most new projects. And the framework is moving ahead blazing fast. It has its own pros and cons, but overall, it's been a VERY positive experience and it actually saves me a LOT of time because I'm able to find code errors at compile time.
It's almost the only alternative to Rails which seems like home if you're transitioning, but it still has its own issues. For example, they screwed up the code organization with contexts, renamed the web folder a couple of times and so on. But these are small issues and I'm amazed at the productivity I gained by using Phoenix.
I wrote a full fledged Stripe API library in under 12 hours. Well tested and rock solid. Pattern matching is heaven and in many ways, your code is more robust. I have written libraries in Ruby too, they take more time simply because there are lot more tests that need to be written.
I would never go as far as saying "I'm sick of Ruby", simply because it's still a great programming language, if you're getting started and also because, I believe in the man behind it - Matz. He has a philosophy and believes in it. It takes enormous passion and dedication to believe in what you've created, support it over decade(s) and keep on improving it. I can point you many languages that have died over the years because they lacked this passion and dedication.
Same thing goes for DHH as well. I really applaud him for patiently tolerating so many people bashing the framework he helped to create that revolutionized web development. He's also very very chill and respectful about others' opinions. [1]
Having said all this, I hope Ruby 3.0 has a strong come back which is much needed at the moment.
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-of-Elixir-and-Phoeni...