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0 pointsrubber_duck5y ago0 comments

Won ? Ruby fell off a cliff once it got to a point where people had to maintain that shit in production - I'm currently working on a large mature RoR codebase and I'm switching jobs ASAP because it's incredibly painful to work with and feels like a dead end career wise - and I like the gig otherwise - good product and a decent team - but the technology is draining so much of my life energy on nonsense it's ridiculous. And the language is built for unmaintainability - standard functions being abbreviated to a single letter, 2 or 3 aliases for a single standard function (map/collect and such), Rails overriding the conventions of the language (! postfix). And then there's the architectural retardation of fat models, fat controllers and using mixins ("concerns") completely break encapsulation - all actively killing code reuse-

PHP has long been a meme and is mostly legacy stuff or bottom tier work.

Dynamic languages are adding static optional static typing because the value provided by tooling as the projects scales is undeniable.

It took ES6/TypeScript to drag JS out of the dump that it was with every library adding its own take on a class system - the maintainability jump from ES5 to TS is incomparable for anything larger than 1k LOC

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wwright5y ago

I say this a lot, but if you are this irritated by Rails, then you ought to see the 20+ year old legacy C/C++ some of us get to work with ;)

rubber_duckOP5y ago

I started on C++ back in VS6 days and I wrote tons of it when I was in to game dev and graphics programming - but I would not want to work on those systems and kinds of problems when I can get paid the same to work on higher level stuff - the tooling quality and slow iteration cycle when I'm really stuck on something leads to a lot of stress - I just want low stress dev environment where I focus on solving problems I'm being paid to solve - not problems created by the tools and then having to explain stakeholders why something seemingly simple takes 3x of the estimate. I like environments where I'm confident in my estimates - C# proved to be good in this regard simply because the tooling is there even when I hit a wall and it has a relatively consistent uniformity that makes it easier to navigate unknown territory.

cmrdporcupine5y ago

Funny, after 10 years of Java and other high level languages I was very happy to go work on C++ at a lower level and have been pushing myself lower down the stack as I go.

C++ these days is a far more pleasant beast than the VS6 days, the tooling is pretty good and the language can be tamed into a pretty elegant beast with the right coding standards and discipline.

bigredhdl5y ago

I agree. My team is just more productive in C#, so we just stay there as much as possible. As you say, the ability to work on just solving the actual problem is very under valued.

cmrdporcupine5y ago

This is one nice thing about working at Google. We have C++ codebases that are 20 years old, but you'd never be able to tell because they are still continuously worked on and even if not there's a team of people at Google who constantly run company-wide refactorings and the like to modernize things.

gen2205y ago

This is, IMO, one of the most underrated aspects of the monorepo, that has such a valuable impact over time.

It only takes a handful of extremely passionate engineers (and I really mean a handful, like less that 2% of engineers in an org) to raise the quality-floor of the entire codebase.

2 more replies

mmargerum5y ago

I've got a large codebase i've been maintaining since 1999 that i've continued to evolve and is still in use today . I've been able to steadily improve it without breaking much. IDK maybe its being > 50 but I can appreciate less "dynamic" environments. I do we dev in vue with a go back end but I know the vue part is going to be a rewrite in 5 years. Who wants to keep doing that shit? not this 52 year old guy.

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pjmlp5y ago

Yeah, the problem is that the large majority of the world isn't Google, software isn't their main business, and their codebases are maintained by a continuous rotation of external contractors that are paid by the tickets that they get to implement.

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angrygoat5y ago

I'll see your legacy C/C++ and raise you legacy Fortran 77 :)

wwright5y ago

We needn't fill the young Rubyist's head with nightmares that deep, friend :)

Dowwie5y ago

I think you would really appreciate Rust for backend web dev. Quite a few people who were once upon a time hardcore rubyists gravitated to Rust and became some of its greatest contributors: Steve K., Sean G., Carl L., Florian G., and many more.

rubber_duckOP5y ago

I like Rust a lot - especially since I have a C++ background - unfortunately I don't see any opportunities to move to it ATM, but I haven't really tried hard enough - maybe I'll take a month off after my current project to write something substantial in it and try to find a Rust gig.

kevinyew5y ago

PHP is definitely not a meme, it's got a ton of actively developed frameworks, PHP 7 was a huge step forward for the language and PHP 8 is shaping up to be as well.

It's been used at every workplace I've been at, sometimes well, sometimes not so well, just like any language. No idea what the point of blanket statements like this is.

ampersandy5y ago

Especially when said statements are just wrong. Anecdotal evidence from individual companies does not allow you to make representative statements about the entire internet...

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php claims ~79% of websites whose backend is known use PHP.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-ruby shows Ruby has grown from 2.5-3.5% over the last year.

jmuguy5y ago

Which standard function in Ruby is a single letter?

rubber_duckOP5y ago

b, to_s, to_i, to_a, to_c, to_h, to_r, etc.

Should have said methods but you get what I mean. And I've encountered ambiguous and pointless abbreviations all over the place.

colmvp5y ago

It's weird, when I was I younger I used to love shortform syntax like that as well as removing unnecessary punctuation

But now that I'm older, I appreciate things being more descriptive and orderly, including strict use of semicolons, functions that say what they are doing (e.g. to_string), or being explicit about converting (e.g. static_cast<type>)

I think it's because I find trying to make everything as succinct as possible ends up trying to be too clever.

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jmuguy5y ago

Interesting, I’d never seen or used .b or .p that someone else mentioned. I agree those definitely should not be a part of the standard library. Not sure about to_i etc. we use those pretty often and it’s never really been an issue.

andrenth5y ago

thecreamedcorn5y ago

I think you took the phrase too literally. I'm assuming by won they didn't mean that Ruby and PHP will dominate the web landscape for eternity. I'll just point out that dynamic programming languages have for most of the webs history been the primary tool for developers.

Kiro5y ago

The meme here is that your comment reads like a parody of an outraged junior programmer at their Dunning–Kruger peak.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

wwright5y ago

I say this a lot, but if you are this irritated by Rails, then you ought to see the 20+ year old legacy C/C++ some of us get to work with ;)

rubber_duckOP5y ago

cmrdporcupine5y ago

Funny, after 10 years of Java and other high level languages I was very happy to go work on C++ at a lower level and have been pushing myself lower down the stack as I go.

C++ these days is a far more pleasant beast than the VS6 days, the tooling is pretty good and the language can be tamed into a pretty elegant beast with the right coding standards and discipline.

bigredhdl5y ago

I agree. My team is just more productive in C#, so we just stay there as much as possible. As you say, the ability to work on just solving the actual problem is very under valued.

cmrdporcupine5y ago

gen2205y ago

This is, IMO, one of the most underrated aspects of the monorepo, that has such a valuable impact over time.

It only takes a handful of extremely passionate engineers (and I really mean a handful, like less that 2% of engineers in an org) to raise the quality-floor of the entire codebase.

2 more replies

mmargerum5y ago

1 more reply

pjmlp5y ago

1 more reply

angrygoat5y ago

I'll see your legacy C/C++ and raise you legacy Fortran 77 :)

wwright5y ago

We needn't fill the young Rubyist's head with nightmares that deep, friend :)

Dowwie5y ago

rubber_duckOP5y ago

kevinyew5y ago

PHP is definitely not a meme, it's got a ton of actively developed frameworks, PHP 7 was a huge step forward for the language and PHP 8 is shaping up to be as well.

It's been used at every workplace I've been at, sometimes well, sometimes not so well, just like any language. No idea what the point of blanket statements like this is.

ampersandy5y ago

Especially when said statements are just wrong. Anecdotal evidence from individual companies does not allow you to make representative statements about the entire internet...

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php claims ~79% of websites whose backend is known use PHP.

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-ruby shows Ruby has grown from 2.5-3.5% over the last year.

jmuguy5y ago

Which standard function in Ruby is a single letter?

rubber_duckOP5y ago

b, to_s, to_i, to_a, to_c, to_h, to_r, etc.

Should have said methods but you get what I mean. And I've encountered ambiguous and pointless abbreviations all over the place.

colmvp5y ago

It's weird, when I was I younger I used to love shortform syntax like that as well as removing unnecessary punctuation

I think it's because I find trying to make everything as succinct as possible ends up trying to be too clever.

4 more replies

jmuguy5y ago

andrenth5y ago

thecreamedcorn5y ago

Kiro5y ago

The meme here is that your comment reads like a parody of an outraged junior programmer at their Dunning–Kruger peak.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse