I think the kneejerk hate on Rails by Coffeescript proxy is a good example of why developer-hate on forums like HN is a pitiful metric for scoring an ecosystem.
It's such a non-issue.
In fact, what's impressive is how Sprockets (part of Rails asset compilation) can chain together arbitrary file transformations by looking at the extension. `file.coffee.erb.whatever` will get processed as with the tool configured for `.whatever` files, then it'll eval Erb's <%= ... %> tags, and then finally get processed as Coffeescript before being concat into the bundle.
I always thought that it was a really intuitive way to specify transformations.
But the thing is that you need Rails experience to appreciate a solution like that, and it's easier to write off Rails entirely because someone says that it depends on Coffeescript. In reality, Rails just shipped with the Coffeescript handler so that Sprockets could understand .coffee extensions if you chose to write .coffee files.
Technology-hate only serves to confuse beginners by making them think everything is black and white. And by making them think that they are making a mistake by learning one ecosystem over another when in reality everything has trade-offs and it's better to learn something over wallowing in the paralysis of indecision.
Half of these comments aren't even capable of comparing Javascript to Ruby without bringing up Webpack and the complexity of client-side bundling as if Ruby is a client-side language.
It's such a non-issue.
In fact, what's impressive is how Sprockets (part of Rails asset compilation) can chain together arbitrary file transformations by looking at the extension. `file.coffee.erb.whatever` will get processed as with the tool configured for `.whatever` files, then it'll eval Erb's <%= ... %> tags, and then finally get processed as Coffeescript before being concat into the bundle.
I always thought that it was a really intuitive way to specify transformations.
But the thing is that you need Rails experience to appreciate a solution like that, and it's easier to write off Rails entirely because someone says that it depends on Coffeescript. In reality, Rails just shipped with the Coffeescript handler so that Sprockets could understand .coffee extensions if you chose to write .coffee files.
Technology-hate only serves to confuse beginners by making them think everything is black and white. And by making them think that they are making a mistake by learning one ecosystem over another when in reality everything has trade-offs and it's better to learn something over wallowing in the paralysis of indecision.
Half of these comments aren't even capable of comparing Javascript to Ruby without bringing up Webpack and the complexity of client-side bundling as if Ruby is a client-side language.