Episode 400: RR 393: Speculation on Frameworks with the Panelists

Panel:

Eric Berry
Dave Kimura
David Richards
Charles Max Wood

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panelists talk amongst themselves on today’s topic, which is “speculation on frameworks.” They consider where the tech community currently is right now, and where it’s heading towards the future. They bring-up topics such as: Rails, Ruby, Angular, Agile, and much more. Check it out!

Show Topics:

0:00 – Advertisement: Sentry.io

1:47 – Chuck: Check out the DevRev

2:08 – Panel: A topic about “speculation” would be great today. What are we seeing in the community: what we like/don’t like, and what would you want to change?

He talks about action text, JavaScript framework, and more.

3:41 – Chuck: Service-side rendering is what we talked about in the past. Divya does this with service–side rendering. For content sites that approach makes a lot of sense. I have playing around with this for the past week or so. I was taking it to rendering it to text.

4:39 – Panel: Yeah, that’s the way to go.

5:29 – Chuck: You are talking about a fully side UI.

5:45 – Panel: I thought it was just my age so I am glad we are talking about this. The hip kids want to make these beautiful frontend sites. I want to keep it simple and then justify more later. I guess I would never be as hip but as long as my stuff gets out there – that’s all that matters to me.

6:28 – Panel: Yeah don’t get me wrong...nobody will want to develop your product if it was built 30 years ago. If it is a startup you want it to look good with a nice UI. Nobody will purchase if it looks outdated. How much maintenance do I want to invest into this? Why add another component into that if you cannot maintain it.

7:56 – Chuck: Yeah I have come into this issue while building the Podcast Service that I am creating.

8:25 – Panel: These are good frameworks and they feel great. I don’t realize the complexity that I am taking on sometimes. I have a lot of complexity on my hands: did I need it?

9:02 – Chuck: Sometimes my problem is that I am trying to pull it in after-the-fact. Like the forms to animate or this and that have to slide in. I want a natural feel to the UX. I looked at React and then I didn’t go that way. I have been podcasting about Angular for 4 years, but it was a no-go for my project. For my solution – it makes sense to just get it going and get it rolling.

10:45 – Panel: When we do use Action Vue we are prone to get lazy. What I mean by that is making database calls.

12:01 – Panel: You can think: Inside-Out! That creates an identity around the project. If I can think of that before going in, then everyone knows what we are doing and what their role is. It’s really obvious. Simple things grow into bigger things. I am a fan of service-side objects. It’s a daily work process. That feels good to me and it’s programmatic for me.

13:24 – Chuck: You aren’t saying: I don’t want or I don’t need ... what you are saying is: I will get this tool when I need it.

13:45 – Panel: You can say: “Hey this is what we are going to do and WHY we are going to do it.” It’s nice to come back to old projects and to see that it’s still solid. It’s nice to see that and people own that software and didn’t have to keep updating.

15:06 – Chuck: It reminds me of the Agile development stuff. The approach between Angular and React and Vue are fairly different. They are reasonably different. There will be tradeoffs between which one to use. When you are making that decision then you can make the appropriate decision on that.

16:10 – Panel: I remember in the prior years when the Rails community grew their own people and you were a RAILS person; now it’s you’re a WEB person. 

17:43 – Panel: In a lot of cases it’s good to see what’s out there and to see what’s new; especially early on if they end up being ahead of their time. Then you are an early pioneer in that area. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when you are introducing new things into your core you are running into unforeseeable risks. I am not an early adapter of React, but I know enough of the pros and cons of the framework.

19:48 – Panel: I like that. Maybe I “should” adapt that framework and maybe I am not the right person to do so.

21:06 – Chuck: Dave brought us to a new topic and that’s: being an early adapter. Some people want a name, some people want to invent stuff and so many more reasons “why.” I don’t want to “poo poo” the idea but you need to know WHY.

21:48 – Panel: The cost of developers is A LOT. I just think if I was building a house and I had that expense then I better get a really nice house out of it. I want to do a good job and that’s important. On the business – side they have to rely on us and decisions that are in the best interest for everyone.

22:50 – Fresh Books!

23:53 – Chuck: So what do you guys think about: what’s coming? Do you feel like things are going to move away from frontend frameworks? Will there be a large adoption curve?

24:30 – Panel: If we are talking about the space of Ruby on Rails then you want it to be maintainable. You don’t want to steer too far away from its core.

28:11 – Panel: Good I like that. There are great tools that we are getting through Google, Facebook and they have great tools for these apps. They are looking for the 1-person startup very much like Basecamp. It’s all possible that we are holding onto these technologies that are great but does it fit ME. Do I want to maintain things? Do I want to make this more complicated? Especially if I really don’t fit into what I’m trying to do.

29:13 – Panel: Yeah some people in the DOT NET world they were really struggling with some modern approaches.

30:42 – Panel: One of our listeners texted me b/c we are recording LIVE.

Panelist reads off from a listener’s text message that uses a quote.

31:16 – Panel: When I started Ruby it was a PHP project and I couldn’t get there. I didn’t have enough bandwidth. It was easy for me to build the RAILS way.

32:02 – Chuck: I was introduced to PHP in college, early 2000’s. I really enjoyed it and I was fairly productive and then I found Rails.

32:27 – Panelist talks about PHP, flash frontend, and more.

34:42 – Chuck: Could and will something come along that will affect the way we write code?

34:56 – Panel: Yes, b/c I think technology is sustainable for a certain amount of time before things start to change again. Look at the iPhones and the Android phones.

38:26 – Panel: I think it takes time to do something well.

Panelist talks about Rails, Ruby, data, and more!

40:25 – Panel: It’s interesting b/c the tradeoff used to be much bigger. The bandwidth is better, the screens are better, the way we do things are better. There is much of a tradeoff. That’s how people are interacting with our business and our products. I tend to write these flowery articles that I don’t publish. There was something in the air and in the mid-2000’s we were launching Netflix, and all of these things were happening at that time. A lot is happening now but it’s different now. Where are we going? Where would I be happy to work? If we can get on the phone and inside of our data and it just adds more value. It’s not an easy answer to “Where are we going?” but it’s good to talk about it b/c people might be afraid to ask and to answer.

43:13 – Chuck: Anything else or picks?

43:19 – Panel: We are saying today: we aren’t trying to break-out of this bubble, but we are saying: let’s get closer to the user and there is so much opportunity in THIS space!!

44:10 – Panel: The technology is tapped-out right now.

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