David Kimura
PRO
said 7 days ago
:
Back in 2010, we had a few options for rich front end interactions. RailsUJS got us a little bit of the way there, but was severely lacking. Turbolinks back then often caused problems with other javascript libraries and was often something that I would disable when creating new applications.
Fast forward to today, and that isn't the case much anymore. Today, with Stimulus and Turbo, we are able to create rich interactions on the front end. Even with Turbo alone (with streams and frames) we can accomplish a lot of rich interactions without needing to write any javascript ourselves. While some may benefit from using a heavier frontend framework like React, Vue or Angular, the benefits are fewer and fewer today than they were back then.
Perhaps if there was a larger company who had a whole department around design and frontend stuff, it could still make sense to use React and the Ruby on Rails side was simply providing an API. But often enough, this isn't the case for small to medium size companies (and even a lot of large ones). I've seen some medium sized companies today that are still stuck in this mindset that Ruby on Rails cannot handle rich interactions and they're still developing Rails/Frontend Framework(Angular/Vue/React) together on the same team and their velocity is slower than had they stuck with what Rails provides today. Another benefit is that there is a vast library of existing components for React that could be appealing to some to use those instead of having to create their own implementations.
Regardless, on a new application, my preferred route is the "Rails Way" using what is provided by default. Over the past several years (ever since Stimulus was released), I lost any desire to explore frontend frameworks and with the release of Turbo, this was solidified.
Fast forward to today, and that isn't the case much anymore. Today, with Stimulus and Turbo, we are able to create rich interactions on the front end. Even with Turbo alone (with streams and frames) we can accomplish a lot of rich interactions without needing to write any javascript ourselves. While some may benefit from using a heavier frontend framework like React, Vue or Angular, the benefits are fewer and fewer today than they were back then.
Perhaps if there was a larger company who had a whole department around design and frontend stuff, it could still make sense to use React and the Ruby on Rails side was simply providing an API. But often enough, this isn't the case for small to medium size companies (and even a lot of large ones). I've seen some medium sized companies today that are still stuck in this mindset that Ruby on Rails cannot handle rich interactions and they're still developing Rails/Frontend Framework(Angular/Vue/React) together on the same team and their velocity is slower than had they stuck with what Rails provides today. Another benefit is that there is a vast library of existing components for React that could be appealing to some to use those instead of having to create their own implementations.
Regardless, on a new application, my preferred route is the "Rails Way" using what is provided by default. Over the past several years (ever since Stimulus was released), I lost any desire to explore frontend frameworks and with the release of Turbo, this was solidified.