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Is Ruby on Rails Maintainable?

Posted by Cliff on from the would-you-want-to-edit-the-code-later dept.

kale77in asks: "I've become a big fan of Ruby over the past few months, but I'm not at all sure about Ruby On Rails. Automatic code generation sets of alarm bells in my mind; so that, to RoR's promise of 'Web Development that Doesn't Hurt', I automatically add '...until you have to maintain it'. On the other hand, some writers and coders I respect (like the Pragmatic Programming mob) seem to be fans. I've mainly written generators in Python, to produce PHP/SQL/Java from SQL files, but I've always gone back to well-constructed objects, where extension and overloading offers more precise and maintainable customization than auto-generation allows. So is Rails just a nice RAD tool for disposable, cookie-cutter apps (which have a place, of course)? Is high-level generation just a bad OO substitute? And what has your experience of Rails' maintainability been?"

7 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. We've been told... by fury88 · · Score: 3, Funny

    To stay FAR FAR AWAY from Ruby on Rails here. In fact, they sent us java developers to the Java conference and we were forbidden to go into any of those seminars. Why? Probably because they don't want us picking up any bad habits.

  2. Re:Uhm... by eclectro · · Score: 2, Funny

    Do you have a beef with compilers and assemblers?

    No, but interpreters have always slowed me down.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  3. Nobody even uses the scaffolding anymore by bloodroot · · Score: 3, Funny

    Unless they're making a promotional movie on writing a slashdot replacement in 5 minutes

  4. Re:Yes, very by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hm. Then perhaps the best way to maintain code quality is to change languages every few years :-)

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  5. If you think Ruby on Rails is scary... by NardofDoom · · Score: 2, Funny

    You've obviously never worked with ASP.NET.

    --
    You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
  6. Doesn't work. by Medievalist · · Score: 3, Funny


    Sadly, the stupid are shameless.

  7. Re:Yes, very by pthisis · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or you could just be incredibly elitist about it and shame bad coders into never publishing stupid crap for other people to see or maintain
    No, the key is to have a superficial language feature that has no impact on development time but keeps people away.

    Tons of parentheses seems to work well. Using indentation to delimit is another approach that's still in its infancy.

    --
    rage, rage against the dying of the light