Yeah sure - it absolutely has drawbacks. I too have spent time going "what the heck is this actually doing". But man when you're not debugging one of those wonky things, Rails just feels like programming with a rocket strapped to your chair.

Is it the most maintainable code? No. Is it the easiest to understand? It depends tbh. Rails provides so much out-of-the-box stuff that lots of rails apps end up looking sufficiently similar, especially if they're small-to-medium-sized. But yes you can end up writing some dreadful spaghetti without a bit of discipline, but imo that's true of python and (node) js as well.

But damn is it SO fast to get up and going. And given product-market fit is why most projects and products fail, it's hard to argue against using Rails for me, since if I'm even still here to complain about it later, that's already a win.

> Rails just feels like programming with a rocket strapped to your chair.

I know this feeling!

I'm not super proficient with Ruby/Rails but we use it for our backend at work, and this reflects a large portion of the time I've spent using it. People who use Rails every day take for granted just how much magic there is and how confusing it can be for someone less experienced with it.

Adding here, a lot of this unknown is mitigated by convention over configuration in Rails.

If one using Rails accepts this and tries not to fight it, then the metaprogramming of Rails provides a lot of goodies.

Which is great in theory, until you realize that there are 200 pages of convention, and there is just enough room for interpretation that different companies have slightly different takes on it.

I think here, different people have different preferences.

I prefer convention over configuration because once learned it just works. For me in Rails when I look at an URL, I kinda know what is the file that handles that (the controller). And that is what I appreciate.

Of course, different needs require different solutions. I also worked with Sinatra which does not have this. But I choose it exactly because it is light and it allows me to group my logic in a different way.

Same for me. I am now happily using Crystal as a ruby-with-a-compiler and the joys of the beginning are coming back.

+1 for Crystal; amazing language.

Ruby metaprogramming breaks `grep` and static analysis tools. This is a no-go for any large project for me

I like metaprogramming for gems, libs, DSLs, etc. stuff that rarely changes, where the maintainers knows where all the bodies are buried. I rarely use it for business logic for the reason above.

That’s what irb is for. But yeah it’s not always obvious how to reproduce a prod issue. Frankly it tends to be a lot of tribal knowledge, so if you’re working at a big Ruby shop don’t be shy about asking the more knowledgeable devs questions.