RR 438: Deviating from the Rails Core

Nov 19, 2019

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Today Charles and Dave are discussing deviating from the Rails core. Dave doesn’t care for JavaScript frameworks or microservices as he believes that they add too much complexity. These things may become necessary when your project gets massive, but otherwise we shouldn’t jump to these as a first option. If you don’t need the frontend powerhouse features, you may want to see how far you can get with Rails and a minimal frontend. React may not always be the solution that you need. They discuss jQuery versus Stimulus. They both prefer jQuery over Stimulus as they find it less invasive and clunky, and it’s easier to drop things in. Dave talks about his experience with ElasticSearch and how he simplified it. They discuss using MongoDB and Mongoid. They agree that although these are not Ruby specific, they can help. Dave, however, has not found a need for them, while Charles has found that it gave him more advantages in his schema. He talks about some other advantages of MongoDB. Dave and Charles discuss the default testing library for Rails, MiniTest. Dave prefers RSpec, but he still uses Mini test because it’s included in the rails core. He has found that RSpec benefits him, while Mini Test benefits his application, so he sticks to what’s included. He believes that sticking close to the core and counting on the widely used things keeping up to speed makes maintaining on the application easier, and things are less likely to break. They turn to discussing when it is appropriate to deviate. Again, Dave believes that small applications without a massive amount of traffic don’t need to deviate, but adds that unique situations require unique solutions. It’s important to Consider if the solution will box you into an infrastructure provider or long term maintenance on something you don’t usnderstand. They agree that the goal is to introduce the least amount of technical debt as possible. Panelists

Dave Kimura
Charles Max Wood