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Ask HN: Would you learn RubyOnRails in 2022 as a solo bootstrapped founder?
1 point by throwawaynay on Jan 23, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments
I started coding with PHP a decade ago, then Node.js 5 years later, and last year I started working with Typescript and Vue.js

And as much as I love the whole JS ecosystem, I'll admit that for me it's a pain in the *ss to quickly build a MVP while still caring about code quality.

It's cool for toy projects, it's also good if you have the time and the skills to build a big project with a real professional architecture, but for quick MVPs I find it kinda lame and slow, I rarely finish MVPs in JS actually.

I've heard a lot of amazing stuff about RubyOnRails, but I have this weird, maybe mistaken impression that it's a thing of the past(The stats about RoR in StackOverflow Surveys don't look great for example), or something too easy they teach at bootcamps to people who never coded, because it's the only stuff you can realistically learn in 2 months.

I know of the stories about Airbnb, Github etc... but have they actually used it for a decent period of time with a large number of users?

Or was it mostly just quick prototyping and then quickly having to remake everything from scratch?

I just read this article from DHH called "the one person framework" https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-one-person-framework-711e6318, and I'm almost convinced, but at the same time he created it, so it's kinda biased and I don't know what to think.

Also how do you think the market will look like for RoR devs in 2 years?

Thanks




Rails is a fine framework. It comes with a sets of trade-offs, but that's true for all solutions. It's probably not as popular as it once was, but that doesn't mean it's "dead" or "irrelevant" or whatnot.

If you're a solo founder I would just stick with what you already know and have experience with. Learning Ruby and Rails takes time better spent elsewhere in this phase, and you also risk doing things badly as you lack the experience using it effectively which may end up hurting you.


If you're not finishing projects then that's a you problem, not a code problem.

JS is fine, and for a front-end MVP it's probably the easiest choice. Ruby is also fine, but I don't think Rails is as popular as it used to be job wise.


>If you're not finishing projects then that's a you problem, not a code problem.

Yes I was thinking about that while writing it. But I also read about some people claiming that developing their MVP with RoR instead of JS was twice as fast.

And usually by the time I'm halfway done in JS, I lose interest or already thought of something else, if prototyping was twice as fast I'm sure I'd release a lot more small projects




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