Ruby on Rails

Long-term owners

Anyway I ported everything to Rails and it's wonderful. I know how it works, there's almost 30 years of examples online

May 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• DjangoA mature, boring Python web framework with built-in auth, admin and migrations that lets people ship working apps fast, though critics say its magic gets in the way.277recommend
• Next.jsA full-stack React framework recommended for server rendering, file-based routing, ISR and an opinionated structure, though critics widely find it complex, churn-prone and tilted toward Vercel hosting.127recommend
• Phoenix FrameworkDevelopers recommend Phoenix for fast, low-overhead web apps with real-time features and little client-side JavaScript. Caveats: a steep learning curve and friction during upgrades.85recommend
• LaravelDevelopers praise its smooth, well documented, batteries-included defaults for building web apps fast. The most common caveat is worry about ads and VC funding.71recommend
• SvelteKitDevelopers recommend SvelteKit for fast, small sites with good developer experience and built-in server rendering. Common caveat: frequent breaking changes between releases.67recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 628 comments. Each links to the original.

1. That's probably why a lot of long-time Rails developers still love it for small teams and product work, but feel friction once the codebase crosses a certain size.

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Returning to Rails in 2026”

2. Rails worked extremely well for its time, especially around 2007–2015, but it started to show its age as newer, more capable languages and runtimes matured.

   Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “What About Rails?”

3. Rails has always been about any programmer looking at an existing application and getting a grasp on the code right away cause of the conventions.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Does Ruby on Rails still make sense?”

4. I like Laravel/Rails/et.al. because I don't have to make decisions about the parts of the application that aren't unique to what I'm building

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Primate Is the Last Great Web Framework”

5. just defining data relationships in YAML and typing a single command to get a functioning website and database was in fact pretty cool

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming”

6. It takes intentional effort to internalize the idioms before it clicks and you unlock the magic that makes it so insanely productive.

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Returning to Rails in 2026”

7. I have never really grokked Ruby on Rails and I passionately hate all the frameworks that try to adapt it to some other language.

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Avoid Mini-Frameworks”

8. the extra capabilities you get from an ActiveRecord framework such as full-stack admin pages, free migrations, etc. win overall

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)”

9. The framework allows you to trust that things like authentication and a passable code organization are being correctly handled.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “I built a programming language using Claude Code”

10. LLMs have an obscene amount of context built into their weights about Ruby on Rails, and can work within it extremely quickly.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “RubyLLM: A single, beautiful Ruby framework for all major AI providers”

11. I love the batteries that RoR or Django gives you, but then I also remember how much time it takes to maintain old projects

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Returning to Rails in 2026”

12. The LLM performance with Rails was much better - it handled the increasing complexity as features were added much better.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Choosing a tech stack in a world where LLMs write all the code”

13. Shared constraints and boring conventions age better than clever mini-frameworks built around one team's mental model.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Avoid Mini-Frameworks”

14. Because of the emphasis on convention over configuration, Rails codebases tend to be succinct with minimal boilerplate

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Optimizing Ruby Path Methods”

15. The Rails apps I've programmed with LLMs seem to work a LOT better than arbitrary python or ruby or JavaScript apps.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Use Boring Languages with LLMs”

16. Laravel, Django, Rails, and Spring each have thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of times more websites in production

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Clojure: The Documentary, official trailer [video]”

17. It's launching massive new releases regularly and still underpins a healthy chunk of the top websites on the planet

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Stop Designing Languages. Write Libraries Instead (2016)”

18. You'd be shocked how far you can scale with a few good baremetal servers running something like Rails and Postgres.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native”

19. It's very good indeed with Rails code, I suspect it has something to do with the intentional expressiveness of Ruby

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?”

20. With an agent on a greenfield is when I’m most reliant on a framework for good standards and a clear architecture.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]”

21. Shopify uses Rails to serve nearly a billion users, and they fund several people specifically to improve tooling.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Matz 2/2: The trajectory of Ruby's growth, Open-Source Software today etc.”

22. The core framework and the fact that all projects broadly are structured the same is the ideal use case for LLMs

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Rails Is Done”

23. it works together really well and there's not really a downside compared to doing it completely from scratch

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Drupal is now light-years ahead of its reputation”

24. you just said rails new app something and had a functioning web app that could even just read your database

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “AI makes you boring”

25. As long as you are content to remain on e.g. Rails' "Happy Path", then I've found agents do a fantastic job

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Show HN: Plain – The full-stack Python framework designed for humans and agents”

26. I don't think anyone should really believe in Rails at this point. It was a monumental leap forward at the time but other stacks have shown that there are better ways.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]”

27. I've probably spent more time maintaining a trivial Rails app originally written in 2007 than I spent writing it in the first place.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Returning to Rails in 2026”

28. If a Ruby/Rails codebases get to a large enough point it's really difficult to keep track of what types a method you wrote accepts

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby 4.0.0 Preview2”

29. I've never been a rails dev, but it popularized opinionated MVC, correct? For that reason I would avoid it these days.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Does Ruby on Rails still make sense?”

30. Rails did not bring me joy 12 years ago when I needed to update dependencies for a legacy cloud service we relied on.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “I no longer care to work on any Ruby gems so I've archived all my repositories”

31. the current Rails stack is the best fit for most, though not all, cloud applications that need a web client along with iOS and Android clients

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Show HN: Rails UI”

32. Huge tech corps can move away from Rails, but it's similar to argument of "why the most successful people in the world don't drive Toyotas"

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Elixir v1.20 released: now a gradually typed language”

33. their relative importance is entirely different, and I suspect Ruby would be still be a minority language if Rails had not happened

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby 4.0.0 Preview2”

34. Placing developer experience at the forefront, arguably at the cost of other stuff, looks a lot worse as manual coding disappears.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Does Ruby on Rails still make sense?”

35. The reason I fell in love with Ruby (and by extension, Rails) is because it enabled me as a human to express myself through code.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Returning to Rails in 2026”

36. Ruby and Rails opened a lot of people's minds to the idea that we were allowed to make "delightful" a consideration in API design

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Response to "Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language"”

37. even if it is used as a proxy that delegates business logic to simpler web service workers written in Rails or in python 3

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Sunsetting the Techempower Framework Benchmarks”

38. it took many release cycles and a ton of resources before it was able to outperform the non JITed version when using Rails

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Python's experimental JIT to be removed”

39. Anyway I ported everything to Rails and it's wonderful. I know how it works, there's almost 30 years of examples online

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Why I Created phpc.tv”

40. the path is documented, the deprecation cycle gives you a full minor version to fix warnings before they become errors

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Returning to Rails in 2026”