

Ask HN: Node.js or Sinatra - rajlalwani

I have a very good on Ruby and would develop Sinatra quite quickly whereas NodeJS will take time. But happy to invest time if it is significantly better. Please suggest.
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MrBra
In case you'll restrict the choice between Sinatra and Rails, if you think the
application is going to grow up to a big, full stack one, then go with Rails
otherwise you'll find yourself reinventing the wheel many times. Unless this
is exactly you want, to build your wheel to be different in some fundamental
aspect (i.e. building your stack in a different way than how Rails' does)

Indeed Sinatra is great for playing and experimenting thanks to its bare bones
and not opinionated structure, which makes web development pure fun for basic
things, but I'd only use that (and I actually did and would do again) for
personal projects or small blogs or small things that basically don't need all
of the attentions that a regular full blown web application needs all around.

Unless, as I said, what you want is exactly to build not only your app, but
your personalized stack too, either for learning purposes or for the sake of
only going with as few components as you might actually require, but is it
worth it?

Keep in mind that if this is a personal project or you're building it just for
fun and on your own, and if your satisfaction will come from actually seeing
the app working and doing something rather than just building it, then having
to take care of all the minute parts could at some point take out all the
energy you initially decided to put into it...

I had to learn myself that the complexity of a system increments exponentially
with the number of items or features involved, not linearly.

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nekkoru
Sinatra is better performance-wise IIRC.

Then again, Node comes with the convenience of having the same programming
language on the both the front and the back end of things.

If you don't need performance, it's just preference. Stick to Sinatra if you
want to bang out the app quickly.

~~~
MrBra
If the OP is interested in having the same programming language on both the
browser and the server side, I'd advice to keep an eye open on Ruby Volt
Framework [http://voltframework.com/](http://voltframework.com/)

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davidw
Ruby on Rails.

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rajlalwani
Ruby on Rails is different from Sinatra or NodeJS... wondering which one is
better for API kind of app

~~~
davidw
You can use Rails for that and much more. Or Node, or Go or Erlang or
whatever. "It depends".

