I was an early Rails adopter, somewhere around 0.x and used it every day through 2.3. Somewhere just before 3.0 I stopped using it daily. I recently came back to 5.0 for a few applications and was pleasantly surprised that I was proficient in a day or so.

I wasn’t familiar with ActionCable, Asset Pipeline or CoffeeScript but felt they were all easy enough. All the basics were still there, the MVC application structure, DB migrations, etc.

I share the sentiment that JavaScript and many other languages used for web development are great but seriously lack some of the essentials Rails provides.

So you jumped on early in the Rails timeline and we’re able to keep up. Seems you’re just proving that point.

No, I skipped 3 and 4 and didn’t keep up. Jumping back in was easy.

The essentials haven’t really changed so jumping in at 0.14.5 or 5.0.1 shouldn’t really matter.

I realize I'm fighting an uphill battle here considering your username, but what you're saying is that it's just as easy to jump into Rails today whether you're a total n00b or you were an early adopter using it every day over ~6 years from 0.X to 3.0, skipping a couple versions, and then returning.

Come on...

3 was pretty much a total rewrite of Rails, so you could argue that if you skipped 3 you are starting over from scratch. Pretty much everything changed apart from the higher-level concepts (even the opinionated stuff was diluted to a point)

Agree, Rails 3 absorbing merbisms introduced flexibility to the existing conventions making it easy to stray from the opinionated stuff. Rails 3 was still Rails but definitely made it easier to get yourself into trouble. And definitely changes any Rails 2 developer would have to learn.

I’ve experimented with most of the alternative frameworks and micro-frameworks. I have a real fondness for Sinatra. I’m happy most modern languages have their own Sinatra but I’m sad that most modern languages lack their own Rails.

Yeah I think it certainly helps that I have Rails experience coming back to it and easily picking back up. However learning it at 0.14.3 vs 5.1.4 doesn’t really make a difference. There’s no inherent advantage in the version you started on. Sure learning 5.1.4 helps if you have Rails experience but Rails today is as easy to pick up as it has ever been.

Ha so on the name, I’m transparent at least. I’m no longer a programmer but am a business customer for teams building on JavaScript. I think they have much opportunity and suffer from lack of convention in their day to day work.

Agreed re: that last bit, as a JavaScript fan. I think we’ll see a dominating convention or two emerge over the next few years. Maybe (selfishly, hopefully) not quite as opinionated as Rails but the current landscape is a bit of a mess.

I just learned Ruby (and rails) about a year and a half ago. I found it incredibly easy to pick up. Coming from a PHP/Java background I found that most MVC based frameworks that I already knew are fashioned from Rails in some way.

I think if you're new to most server side languages and javascript SPA's are your wheelhouse your experience will be very foreign and dogmatic feeling. I switch between the two worlds often and am still amazed at how productive I am in ruby/rails.

I started with Rails at 4.x, and having never written a line of Ruby prior it took me about two weeks to be fluent enough to handle most anything thrown at me in the course of "typical" webapp development.

That was about a year ago, and these days my biggest challenge is identifying and filling knowledge gaps. For instance: the mere fact that ActiveJob exists isn't obvious.