Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab

Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by pdimitar on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @05:24PM (#18973217)

To me, the article reads like "We REALLY don't want to abandon Rails so we rewrite the hot paths to Go". I mean no offense; I just wasn't able to find good argumentation in it for sticking with Rails. To me, the article kind of makes the argument for Go.

"Developer productivity" is not a myth and it does exist. But Rails is very far from the only framework that gives you that.

IMO you should seriously evaluate making your web + API gateway in either Elixir or Go, outline a migration plan and get on with it.

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Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by sytse on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @05:38PM (#18973348)

I think a rewrite in Go would greatly increase our line-count.

I think Elixir is very interesting but Phoenix still has some way to go before the ecosystem matches that of Rails. Our Gemfile.lock https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/Gemfile.... is more than 1000 lines!

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Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by pdimitar on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @05:53PM (#18973478)

Well, that complexity is yours to evaluate -- what I am saying is that you are seriously underestimating the Elixir community. And our forum is full of people making this same admission and saying they regret not reaching for Elixir earlier! :)

In the end, it's your call of course. But line-count doesn't say anything about a project's complexity. Go is quite verbose but with rigorous CI, tests, code reviews and linters, teams produce pretty hardcore and good software in Go, regularly.

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Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by sytse on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @06:01PM (#18973551)

I agree Go produces great software. But for the same amount of functionality it tends to require more lines than ruby. I tend to favor the more expressive language http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

Another thing is that there isn't a web framework like Rails in Go. Although I'm keeping an eye on go-micro and we plan to add that as a template soon.

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Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by pdimitar on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @06:03PM (#18973578)

Yeah, fully agreed on that. Go just doesn't have as productive a framework like Rails. That's why I only use it for very small websites or even smaller API gateways. Or CLIs. Or network daemons.

I am not disputing your choices. Just wanted to give you the quick and intuitive (and likely misinformed) immediate reaction that I had from the article.

Keep making GitLab awesome. <3

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Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by sytse on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @06:53PM (#18974136)

Thank you! <3

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Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by dieblur on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @05:46PM (#18973422)

Line-count really isn't a great way to measure developer productivity either though...

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Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab by Scarbutt on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @06:26PM (#18973873)

It does measure bug count though.

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