

Rails Is Too Easy - jenius
http://tumblr.com/xnm2yuw0yz

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relix
You're looking at it in the wrong way. It's very easy to get started, but it's
sort of "difficult" to get your head around how everything works, and where
some of the "magic" comes from.

If you don't want to understand it, you can be on your way in 5 minutes. If
you have a problem, you have the option of learning how it works. For example
your point about databases is moot: were it not for rails, you'd still have to
figure out how databases work. Now it became optional. If you do run into
problems and need to learn how databases work, then you're no worse off than
if you would have written the queries yourself, because then you'd still have
to learn how the database works.

Most of the "compilation" of haml and erb and coffeescript is only once, after
which it's cached and works just as fast as a static file. Still, there's some
truth to the fact that it becomes a bit slower, but for most sites it's still
well within bounds, and wouldn't be noticeable to the user unless you're
running a 100 reqs per sec site.

~~~
jenius
What you said in the first sentence of this reply was exactly my point -
perhaps this didn't come across correctly in the post. I totally appreciate
rails for how easy it makes things, and there's a reason that I chose it and
continue to work with it.

The problem that I am bringing up here is exactly what you pointed out in your
second paragraph - you can get away with not understanding it, which is very
tempting for beginners. If your two options are (1) get off and running
immediately without deep understanding or (2) take a long time to understand
things before you start -- for a beginner, this is often an easy decision.

But in reality, it's important down the road to know what's going on behind
the scenes, so you can be cruising along not knowing how things work, then
when you run into a snag that you can't figure out, everything halts while you
take an extended period of time to try to figure it out.

