I have been developing web applications since 2005 in RubyonRails and I think it is the best framework for building web applications ever.
Why?
Ruby Language
Dynamic
Easy to understand and write
Many features such as duck typing, etc.
Gems
Too opinionated
- I don't have to bother about where to find what - each file has its place
Large community and ecosystem
- Gems are available to do just anything required in a web application
ORM
ActiveModel
ActiveRecord
A large number of web products as examples
Shopify
Github
Basecamp
etc
I had tried building web applications using PHP-based frameworks Zend, and Symfony; Python-based framework Django; Elixir-based framework Phoenix; and Rust-based frameworks Rocket, and Actix.
So far none has been compelling to make leave Ruby on Rails.
Ok, let's come to the main highlight of the post. Why Rust is not good for web development? This is my observation and might differ for other programmers.
I don't like compiling as I am happy seeing my code work or not work live dynamically. Also, I don't care because my dev machine has 32 GB and an 8-core processor so I am not developing web applications in a hardware-constrained dev env.
I don't want to bother about manually worrying about data and function types because I have already enough to focus on a web application. Nowadays, each industry or field has a web application already available with intense competition such that each new web application to be launched needs competitive features to sustain. The SaaS industry is too competitive and every day 100s products fail.
Rust does NOT have a compelling web application development framework that can make me leave my comfort zone I have with Ruby on Rails.
Lack of large web development community and ecosystem.
Lack of a well-defined ORM. I personally feel a web application has to be developed as a monolith till it reaches a stage where it can be distributed into a few web services to make it more fast and available to users.
What do you say?