I’ve always wondered who else uses Ruby on Rails besides the usual names like GitHub, Shopify, Basecamp, etc.<p>Last month, I built a directory of web apps built with the Rails framework.<p>With Rails 8 released last year, the framework is stronger than ever. Some even say it’s experiencing a renaissance.<p>There are already 21 submissions, and if you use Rails, you’re welcome to add your app or website!
I've always been interested in rails, even though my career has gone the JS/TS route. Think i might finally take the plunge and try to build some random stuff with it. See how far i can get by looking at code examples and asking gpt "how do you do x in rails" etc.<p>Really love that it seems to just be a complete toolbox, especially for a solo project.<p>Also seeing more and more rails roles out there, but obviously don't have 5+ years with the framework
Rails 8 made me love Rails again after a few years working with other tools. The new direction is just perfect, specially for solo developers. The 'solid trifecta' in combination with the simplicity of using sqlite3, the new built in auth solution, Kamal... everything, so f*ing good.
I've used nothing but Rails since about 2004. Of course I've been integrating and playing with various JS frameworks over the same time period, but the only things that's remained consistent is Rails as the base. I've gone through at least 4 or 5 different JS frameworks in that time and that aspect of development has grown rather tiresome.
Been using Rails professionally for 13 years (currently at GitLab) and I still don't think anything else beats it for developer happiness and productivity.<p>It cuts through all the mess of modern web development so well and makes turning an idea in to something deployable incredibly easy.
The main application I have to work with now ended up, for various reasons, as a Rails API with a Vue client.<p>The Rails part has been easy to maintain and adapt to users' frequent changes, the main issues being feature requests for very complicated queries which then end up being slow. Vue has taken up a lot of time with the migration from 2 -> 3 (still not finished).
What’s the best way to use JavaScript on rails these days?<p>I’ve been using rails for over 20 years and still love it but the JavaScript story has always been in flux in bad ways. I don’t like the turbo stuff or stimulus. Basically just want to be able to add some nice charts, and some enhancements like confirmation for links. Basically just build admins with it so the caching for partial html just isn’t part of the game. Looked at upgrading to rails 8 now but the javascript in last version of rails was fragmented and complicated, so looking to find a good way to do it in a standard way now, hopefully next version of rail’s doesn’t change everything again.
It's such a shame that a big successful Rails or Django equivalent never really materialized in the Node world. It's not like nobody tried. There were so many times it seemed like one was gaining traction, then it would be abandoned or zombified or commercialized, and it just never happened. I really can't understand why.
Cool site! Love seeing what others have built using rails.<p>I've been working on a membership management platform [1] using Rails + Hotwire Turbo & Stimulus and I can't imagine how long it would have taken me using other frameworks around.<p>Want a rich text editor? Just use action text. Want document storage? Active storage is easy. Job queues? Mailers? Caching? Integration testing? All easy to do.<p>I love that Rails is "omakase", once you lean into the ecosystem it's great that most things just... work.<p>[1] <a href="https://embolt.app" rel="nofollow">https://embolt.app</a>
Can someone provide a reason for why anyone should be using Rails? I'm always curious why people love context switching between multiple programming languages.
I've always loved ruby. Sinatra was my jam long ago but after awhile it felt like just remaking Rails when I could just Rails. Then datamapper project went defunct and needing to use ActiveRecord if I didn't want manually do sql seemed even more like I should just use Rails.
Rails is probably one of the most complete, turnkey frameworks I’ve ever used for web development. When I first encountered it, within a day or two, I was building full stack crud apps.<p>However, what shocked me, having come from a C/C++ background were the thousands of dependencies for the most simple of apps. This scared me as how could I possibly understand the security holes and inner workings of all these dependencies.<p>Another problem I ran into was the tendency of rails developers to create monolithic applications with little separation between the UI, middle tier layer, and the data model layer. When I would be writing client side apps and interfacing with rails back ends, The rails teams would always implement new functionality into the website and then separately add functionality to an API. I think this comes down to the way people learn to develop in rails as rails teaches a monolithic method. I would always try to point out that creating an API where all of the logic was held, would make life so much easier for them, and they would agree, but continue to build The monolithic website with a separate API.
One thing I find frustrating with Django is there's not really a place to put business logic. Ask 3 Django people and you'll get 3 different answers, and often different answers from the same person! That's not a good architecture IMO. It should be obvious where stuff goes. Some say it's not Django's concern, Django is just a web framework, but Django doesn't sit nicely at the edge of an architecture where it belongs at all.<p>Is Rails better in this respect?
Rails definitely seems optimized for <i>creating</i> code, but how is it at maintaining code? I've never used it, but it seems like Ruby's dynamic types would make it really challenging to do large refactors. What techniques do rails developers use?
Back in the day, I remember an application that 'analyzed' websites for their Rails hallmarks. I don't know if Rails apps are as distinct nowadays.