Essay · Message

Node vs Rails: agnostic vs batteries included

Adapted from a piece I wrote in April 2024.

Part of what makes Node such a great tool for building a data pipeline is that it is a server with so few assumptions, people often colloquially speak of it as if it is a language. This mindset is extra helpful when building in current environments where any assumption, tool, or interface will be outdated at any moment.

Rails was amazing because batteries were included, and this made everything "faster to market." Nowadays, something agnostic like Node makes everything faster because when using it you can adapt to whatever new thing comes along with minimal effort.

Except I am not sure I believe this.

I actually think our modern JS/Node/TypeScript/Rollup/Webpack/React/Something/Somethingelse toolchains are terrible. Probably Rails or iOS or something has it right by not allowing infinite possible build configurations and systems.