Re:From Node to Ruby on Rails
by davelnewton on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:47PM
(#29582124)
Couldn't disagree more, but I think you're taking the term "magic" too literally.
There is a ton of magic in Rails. It consists primarily of magic. I've been doing Rails since <1yr of introduction (Ruby for longer than that, and Lisp for longer than either). I'm very familiar with metaprogramming. Metaprogramming fits the canonical definition of magic in this context.
Ruby, and Rails, also makes it very easy, and seductive, to add more magic. This is powerful, but dangerous. Like Lisp macros. Understanding the magic is not just a matter of "understanding the conventions" and reading the docs.
Everytime you see something you don't know where it's coming from, it's magic. Every time I interacted with Rais ive seen it, you have to know that some file somewhere registered or autoloader something else, etc. You don't see the imports to find it, you have to grep the repo instead and sort through all the matches.
Let me assure you, there is 0 magic in Rails. Just because something is available to you via a convention doesn't mean there's magic, it means you haven't read the docs and don't understand the convention.