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Comment by pianoben

5 days ago

One of the largest codebases I've ever worked on, generating billions in revenue every year to this day, is in Rails. Over a thousand hands have touched it, and none of the original people are still around to hold an empire.

I'm with you on the general lack of discipline enforced by Rails; this codebase isn't fun to maintain, precisely for that reason. All the same, I don't think your critique is fair or even that accurate.

But that's from my POV working at bigger companies. Maybe it looks different as a freelancer for smaller shops.

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pianoben

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throwanem  5 days ago

By the sound of it, your POV working at one big company. The codebases I've worked on that did similar ARR numbers with similar depths of commit history were in Javascript and TypeScript, so "your argument is invalid," right? Why not? It's just what you said and my credentials are better. What's the most in revenue one second of your life was ever worth? For me that's about $35k. But no, you go ahead, try to big league me with numbers some more.

If you think my critique is unjust or inaccurate, then attack it, not my standing to speak on the subject. Especially not when I'm the more forthcoming of the two of us when it comes to professional history, anyway; mine is findable from my HN profile, while you prefer true pseudonymy. To argue from authority as you've tried is quite risible with none of that even in evidence, don't you think?

  • pianoben  5 days ago

    I don't mean to say one of us has better bona-fides, only that there is an existence proof to the contrary of your post. You claim that rails' lack of discipline promotes unmaintainable code shepherded by empire-builders; I claim that this is not always so. I gave the numbers I did to emphasize that rails (and rails shops) can succeed even at that scale.

    Not sure what I said that came off as an attack on you or your standing. Not my intent.