Here's how I interpret the author's points:<p>1. Rails isn't cool.<p>2. If you spend enough time hunting around, you can find Node libraries that, collectively, do everything Rails does out of the box.<p>3. Node is "cool."<p>4. A third party product which has nothing to do with Rails for building native iOS apps in Ruby is no longer actively maintained.<p>5. Write once run anywhere, but this time it'll really work!
Owner/CEO/Steward of RubyMotion here.<p>1. Laurent did sell RubyMotion off (to basically retire). He sold it to me. The guy that built the mobile adaptation of A Dark Room with RubyMotion (which hit the number one spot on the AppStore _and_ the number two spot on Google Play).<p>2. Since the acquisition, there have been monthly updates to the platform, and measures to slowly open source RM under a _sustainable_ open source model.<p>3. I have since released 4 other apps using RubyMotion. Combined they have approximately 3.5 million downloads.<p>4. RubyMotion is _actually_ native (unlike React Native).<p>5. RubyMotion is definitely not cool anymore. It's battle-hardened, "just works", fast (faster than Swift in fact), and can leverage all the existing Android and iOS libraries out there (which React not-Native can't do out of the box).<p>6. Email me and I'll hook you up with an Indie license <3.
Here's how I interpret the author's points:<p>1. Rails was a breath of fresh air over the explicit-rather-than-implicit web frameworks of the time, but while making a splash in the startup world, it didn't seem to be embraced in legacy bigcorp settings.<p>2. JS is an ecosystem that is mandatory on the frontend and has become viable (and actually novel) on the backend, and was eventually able to make inroads in bigcorp settings unlike Ruby. This ubiquity and agreeableness, combined with its rich array of libraries and active community, makes it compelling. As the Ruby community matured, the hype around it has died down, leading to less buzz but also less prominent innovation.<p>3. React Native is the killer SDK for making one codebase work on every relevant (mobile) platform. (Presumably, if the author were concerned with lives-on-desktop applications too, Electron would be mentioned as well.)<p>4. The core JS language is actually being worked on now and isn't nearly as quasi-abandonware or as horrendous as it once used to be. (Some credit paid to browser-makers is missing, as every browser-maker has done their part in both trying to move the ecosystem forward in divergent ways, and then much later coming together to harmonize their implementations and resolve to work in a more coordinated way. This 10-year evolution ultimately made duct tape shims like jQuery unnecessary, which paved the way for more holistic frameworks like Ember, Knockout, Angular, and React to set a different architectural model for JS code, landing the community where it is today.)
I had my doubts but read the post to see where I could be enlightened. Two points sums it up for me:<p><pre><code> 1. Phoenix+Elixir [a modern Rails successor]
2. [satisfy] both corporates and startups
</code></pre>
I don't know who needs point 2. Perhaps consulting or a dev who only wants to learn a single stack? Not me.<p>I've used Rails at a scale where it hurts. Phoenix+Elixir is great if a little learning curve is okay. Spring+Java is bloated for many use cases so I have found and used microframeworks such as Javalin+Kotlin+JDBI which is far superior to Node on the back-end. For even smaller projects Go is a fine choice if you don't mind the simplicity which is simultaneously it's strong and weak point.
> Corporate world is not coping with Ruby Rails very well.<p>Now I know DHH will mention Github and Shopify as examples. But I believe both tends towards "startup" and aren't very cooperate. So I will give two <i>Cooperate</i>" examples,<p>Bloomberg News - I really wish they share more about the Rails Stack.<p>Apple Music - Not sure that is changed, but their first version of Apple Music I believe was on Ruby Rails.<p>The main reason, or the main point the author was <i>trying</i> to get across,( some interrupted as not being <i>Cool</i> ) I think are Ruby, and Rails, as one or as separate subject, lacks the direction, and more importantly the momentum. It is definitely not dead, far from it, but it is not growing either. And I guess the author simply bet on node.js is more like Javascript will continue to grow and survive for the next 10 years.<p>Python and Go had Google, PHP had Facebook, Java had Oracle, .Net had Microsoft, Ruby and Rails manage to come this far without any major backing, all just open source and works from communities. And the communities should be proud of this.<p>P.S - I still believe TruffleRuby will make Rails Great again.
While I agree with the general sentiment only because I could never really get into Ruby beyond basic loops, and am beyond comfortable with JS, but it's hard to take this JS evangelism seriously when their site doesn't even scroll right on mobile.
That pattern of behavior is often indicative that the engineers care more about their concerns than their users, and in that case, why should we care?
If you're not using the tech to solve your users problems, but just using it to hammer your perceived nails, the choice of tech is unimportant, IMHO.
I'm probably nitpicking things, but if you're going to proselytize one path, show the best usage of it, not show off the worst usages of it in the presentation of it's benefits.
You can do it both in Node.is and Rails. But the cool-factor matters because cool means momentum.<p>And you have to make the choice of which platform you will be building your company's expertise on. If it is yesteryear's tech that's not good in the long run.<p>No need to migrate your existing systems but for new development the platform with momentum behind it (= cool-factor) is often better businesswise.
It seems like the core of the argument is Javascript has wider adoption than Ruby, in enterprise and startups.<p>I was expecting a more technical comparisons to Rails and Node. The point made about Ruby not being adopted by well established companies seems half true considering adoption of Rails - AirBnB, Twitter, Coinbase, Github, etc