I sat front row for David's talk yesterday morning. Having talked with him the day before, I’ll admit… I wasn’t particularly surprised (nor unprepared).
A bit of a field report from #RailsWorld: the vibe here is far from doom and gloom. Quite the contrary. Wherever our industry is headed, most of us are still employed as menders… tending to systems that customers rely on and businesses are quite happy to keep paying for.
Most of us aren’t waking up to a blank canvas and designing the architecture of the future. We’re inheriting decisions made years ago, updating old patterns, working around constraints, and keeping this shit running reliably.
I think these newer tools give us an opportunity to wonder a little more about the systems we’ve inherited. To unpack why things work the way they do. To tinker with assumptions we haven’t had the time, confidence, or permission to revisit… and share what we learn so the next person, or agent, has an easier time.
That deployment model we picked eight years ago? Worth another look. Some of our web apps probably wish they were native apps. And there are plenty of architectural decisions we’ve been living with mostly because… well, we’ve been busy living with them.
There’s plenty of understandable anxiety about what these tools mean for our work. I’m increasingly curious about what they give us permission to revisit.
Once my keynote is published, I’ll share more about a little programming-language-adjacent framework I’ve been working on for approaching exactly this kind of curiosity.
How can Rails live long if no one creates new things with it? Our web applications aren't like the Pyramids at Giza. DHH literally said that even without a blank canvas (Hey's backend) they were still able to re-write the backend in Rust and are not looking back.
That sure sounds like any savvy business should pivot away from Rails and Ruby in general as fast as they can, assuming they have tokens to burn. Personally, I built my career on Python, but any new thing I build is almost always in Go or Rust. Why mess with an interpreter if you don't have to?
He clarified today, saying he would build any new app today in Rails. Should that app become so popular that it would benefit from Rust, he would rewrite it in Rust.
According to the schedule, today had a keynote on "AI and the future of Ruby & Rails — a chat with Matz & DHH". I suspect that might have clarified, but sadly they don't seem to have released a video (yet?)
You can accuse DHH of many things, but not of grifting, insincerity, political politeness/correctness just not to offend people. The guy speaks his mind and is unapologetic about it.
The drastic change in the ethnic/cultural makeup of people leaving in many Western countries is a fact. In Finland it is +70% foregners only in the past 10 years. Do you want to dispute stats? Write to the Finnish department of statistics.
Or are you arguing that this is a natural process and politicians can't influence it? Wrong. Pre-post Brexit stats show the opposite. As do the stats from Denmark, after politicians started working on the issue.
You are fine with stats, but don't like DHH's opinions about those facts? Well, those are opinions and everyone has a right to them. Opinions and feelings based on morals can't really be proved incorrect.
Or are you tone policing?
So what exactly is the actual problem? "Someone on the internet has wrong opinions and is not a carbon copy of me, politically"? What a silly and totalitarian behavior to call other people dirty names!
Stop calling anyone with differing opinions a racist or xenophobe. It really feels like these activists are deliberately misusing powerful words in order to weaken them (if everyone is called a racist, no matter how undeservedly, then no one is). Or they are simply stupid and do not understand the reaction they are causing with their totalitarian tactics.
He was't talking about the color of the skin or a passport. He was talking about the culture, does it integrate well, is it compatible, is it "enriching" or actually enriching. Is the person and the group this person belongs to, a negative or a positive for the country, the society, the original/native people.
This has nothing to do with the race or a color of one's skin. Like Idris Elba is British as is Rishi Sunak.
Are you really so ignorant or just pretending to be? White replacement is a conspiracy theory with no basis in reality. You are not under attack. You are not being suppressed or silenced. DHH just doesn’t like people with skin tones darker than his own and who don’t live their lives as presented on nazi party’s propaganda posters. Statistics ain’t on his side. I’m just relaying what he said, if you don’t like that, take that to DHH. I do not endorse nazism.
And I’m not saying anyone’s opinions are wrong, I’m just saying calls to violence, such as DHH’s suggested deportations of people based solely on their skin color, are not opinions. Violence mustn’t be re-labeled as an opinion. Advocating for harming people or violating their agency cannot pass as political position, not even fringe one. You are free to have opinions, values and beliefs, but don’t think other people will be fine with that when your opinion starts affecting their lives. No matter what someone’s external appearance makes you think about a person, they also have opinions, values and beliefs.
(This just a short summary of what basic human decency is.)
I agree with him. All software should be written in safe languages, but there is a wide selection available. For new projects you should pick a language that does as much for you as possible. Ruby and Rails both go out of their way to provide the developer with as much power as they can. They make development less expensive. That’s exactly what you want when you are first building something, before you know exactly what you will need.
Later after you have lots of users and your hosting costs are rising, then you can rewrite it in a language that gets you closer to the machine. You won’t need to do any exploration at that point, and you’ll already know where the performance hot spots are. Of course I recommend Rust for that, but that is merely my personal preference.
robbyrussell · · focus · HN ↗
A bit of a field report from #RailsWorld: the vibe here is far from doom and gloom. Quite the contrary. Wherever our industry is headed, most of us are still employed as menders… tending to systems that customers rely on and businesses are quite happy to keep paying for.
Most of us aren’t waking up to a blank canvas and designing the architecture of the future. We’re inheriting decisions made years ago, updating old patterns, working around constraints, and keeping this shit running reliably.
I think these newer tools give us an opportunity to wonder a little more about the systems we’ve inherited. To unpack why things work the way they do. To tinker with assumptions we haven’t had the time, confidence, or permission to revisit… and share what we learn so the next person, or agent, has an easier time.
That deployment model we picked eight years ago? Worth another look. Some of our web apps probably wish they were native apps. And there are plenty of architectural decisions we’ve been living with mostly because… well, we’ve been busy living with them.
There’s plenty of understandable anxiety about what these tools mean for our work. I’m increasingly curious about what they give us permission to revisit.
Once my keynote is published, I’ll share more about a little programming-language-adjacent framework I’ve been working on for approaching exactly this kind of curiosity.
In the meantime… keep showing up. Keep wondering.
Long live Ruby. Long live Rails.
p(bloom)
secstate · · focus · HN ↗
That sure sounds like any savvy business should pivot away from Rails and Ruby in general as fast as they can, assuming they have tokens to burn. Personally, I built my career on Python, but any new thing I build is almost always in Go or Rust. Why mess with an interpreter if you don't have to?
MattyMc · · focus · HN ↗
sebiw · · focus · HN ↗
usef- · · focus · HN ↗
andrewchambers · · focus · HN ↗
machomaster · · focus · HN ↗
ksec · · focus · HN ↗
But it wasn't.
smnplk · · focus · HN ↗
remix2000 · · focus · HN ↗
machomaster · · focus · HN ↗
Or are you arguing that this is a natural process and politicians can't influence it? Wrong. Pre-post Brexit stats show the opposite. As do the stats from Denmark, after politicians started working on the issue.
You are fine with stats, but don't like DHH's opinions about those facts? Well, those are opinions and everyone has a right to them. Opinions and feelings based on morals can't really be proved incorrect.
Or are you tone policing?
So what exactly is the actual problem? "Someone on the internet has wrong opinions and is not a carbon copy of me, politically"? What a silly and totalitarian behavior to call other people dirty names!
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
machomaster · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
fragmede · · focus · HN ↗
machomaster · · focus · HN ↗
This has nothing to do with the race or a color of one's skin. Like Idris Elba is British as is Rishi Sunak.
micromacrofoot · · focus · HN ↗
remix2000 · · focus · HN ↗
And I’m not saying anyone’s opinions are wrong, I’m just saying calls to violence, such as DHH’s suggested deportations of people based solely on their skin color, are not opinions. Violence mustn’t be re-labeled as an opinion. Advocating for harming people or violating their agency cannot pass as political position, not even fringe one. You are free to have opinions, values and beliefs, but don’t think other people will be fine with that when your opinion starts affecting their lives. No matter what someone’s external appearance makes you think about a person, they also have opinions, values and beliefs.
(This just a short summary of what basic human decency is.)
db48x · · focus · HN ↗
Later after you have lots of users and your hosting costs are rising, then you can rewrite it in a language that gets you closer to the machine. You won’t need to do any exploration at that point, and you’ll already know where the performance hot spots are. Of course I recommend Rust for that, but that is merely my personal preference.
worik · · focus · HN ↗
But there is a "dead middle".
If you have a big cash flow to go with "...lots of users and [rising] hosting costs" then, yes, you're spot on
But if there is insufficient cash flow then costs are rising and you are a bit stuck.
db48x · · focus · HN ↗