alt Hacker NewsThe main line on the Rails website now reads:
> Accelerate your agents with convention over configuration. Ruby on Rails scales from PROMPT to IPO. Token-efficient code that's easy for agents to write and beautiful for humans to review
And I fucking hate it. If I read this the first time I would think this is some kind of tool to optimize your LLM agents.
I have been using Rails for over a decade now and always liked the focus on writing beautiful and simple code. On making it easy to reason about with colleagues. Now it seems like DHH is throwing all what made Rails special overboard.
If we are all supposed to be talking to agents now, what's the difference if my agent uses fucking Next, Nuxt, Rails or Django?
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> Accelerate your agents with convention over configuration. Ruby on Rails scales from PROMPT to IPO. Token-efficient code that's easy for agents to write and beautiful for humans to review
This is so painful... I can't help but wonder who they're trying to target with such inane slogans.
Rails is amazing, but "token-efficiency" is not on the list of reasons why.
> what's the difference if my agent uses fucking Next, Nuxt, Rails or Django?
The claim seems quite clear to me: "convention over configuration allows coding agents to be more effective".
But yes, I do agree that the main line should say what Ruby on Rails actually is, not why it's good for your agent.
>If we are all supposed to be talking to agents now, what's the difference[...]?
it's a little cringe, but arguably the benefit of having agents use rails would be tht when you review and audit the agent produced code, you review something that is, as you put it: "beautiful and simple code" and "making it easy to reason about..."
I loved rails back in 2017. I may be an outlier but the line tempts me to try it again despite having adopted the who cares attitude to langs. Would be nice to hear from someone first hand if they felt it helped.
I thought you were joking so I went to check it myself and... unfortunately you were not. That is insane.
Don't worry, it's just the hype phase and it will pass. (By 'pass' I mean agent-coding will be so ubiquitous that it's a given and not worth mentioning.)
both statements are true though. rails excels in the AI world because it's extremely cared for and intentional with language. and there's a ton of built up knowledge.
fwiw that headline is cringey for sure. but DHH has proven himself a great marketer. it very likely is riding the wave.
Oh boy. I can't even imagine what sort of hell an AI could unleash on a language as dynamic and magical as Ruby...
That is just DHH (/37signals) being expert(s) at positioning.
Trying to answer the question of, why is language and framework still relevant in a world where almost everyone uses an agent for coding?
Author of the article here (hi! Anxiously watching my Grafana stack right now...)
I've only just noticed that on the Rails homepage, and while I acknowledge everyone's chasing that sweet sweet AI hype, I gotta say that's... disappointing[1]. 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. Not to become a glorified janitor for a LLM.
[1]=Well, I had a stronger response initially but I toned it down a bit for here...