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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Frameworks
  5. NestJS vs Rails

NestJS vs Rails

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rails
Rails
Stacks20.2K
Followers13.8K
Votes5.5K
GitHub Stars57.8K
Forks22.0K
NestJS
NestJS
Stacks2.7K
Followers3.0K
Votes326
GitHub Stars73.3K
Forks8.1K

NestJS vs Rails: What are the differences?

  1. Performance: NestJS is built on top of Node.js, which is known for its high-performance capabilities. It utilizes asynchronous programming and event-driven architecture to handle a large number of concurrent requests efficiently. On the other hand, Rails is built on a different language, Ruby, which is not as performant as Node.js. Therefore, NestJS has an advantage in terms of performance over Rails.

  2. Scalability: NestJS is designed with scalability in mind. It allows developers to easily scale their applications horizontally by distributing the load across multiple instances or vertically by adding more resources to a single instance. Rails, although capable of scaling, requires more effort and configuration to achieve the same level of scalability as NestJS.

  3. Language support: NestJS is primarily written in TypeScript, a statically typed superset of JavaScript. This provides developers with a more robust and maintainable codebase, as TypeScript enforces type safety and supports modern JavaScript features. Rails, on the other hand, is written in Ruby, a dynamically typed language that may lead to more runtime errors and requires additional testing.

  4. Modularity: NestJS follows the modular programming pattern, allowing developers to divide their application into smaller, reusable modules. This promotes code reusability, maintainability, and separation of concerns. Rails, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for module-based development, making it more challenging to organize and manage large codebases.

  5. Community and ecosystem: NestJS, being a relatively newer framework, may not have as large of a community and ecosystem compared to Rails. Rails has been around for a longer time and has a mature community that provides extensive documentation, libraries, and plugins. This can be advantageous for developers who prefer a more established and well-supported framework.

  6. Maturity and stability: Rails is a mature and stable framework that has been widely adopted by large organizations and has a proven track record for building successful web applications. NestJS, on the other hand, being relatively newer, may still be evolving and undergoing changes, which could introduce breaking changes or compatibility issues. This aspect should be considered when choosing between the two frameworks.

In Summary, NestJS and Rails differ in terms of performance, scalability, language support, modularity, community and ecosystem, as well as maturity and stability.

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Advice on Rails, NestJS

Shivam
Shivam

AVP - Business at VAYUZ Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Mar 25, 2020

Needs adviceonNode.jsNode.jsJavaJavaRailsRails

Hi Community! Trust everyone is keeping safe. I am exploring the idea of building a #Neobank (App) with end-to-end banking capabilities. In the process of exploring this space, I have come across multiple Apps (N26, Revolut, Monese, etc) and explored their stacks in detail. The confusion remains to be the Backend Tech to be used?

What would you go with considering all of the languages such as Node.js Java Rails Python are suggested by some person or the other. As a general trend, I have noticed the usage of Node with React on the front or Node with a combination of Kotlin and Swift. Please suggest what would be the right approach!

915k views915k
Comments
Ben
Ben

May 19, 2020

Decided

As a small team, we wanted to pick the framework which allowed us to move quickly. There's no option better than Rails. Not having to solve the fundamentals means we can more quickly build our feature set. No other framework can beat ActiveRecord in terms of integration & ease-of use. To top it all of, there's a lot of attention paid to security in the framework, making almost everything safe-by-default.

482k views482k
Comments
Felipe
Felipe

May 24, 2020

Decided

Since I came from python I had two choices: #django or #flask. It felt like it was a better idea to go for #django considering I was building a blogging platform, this is kind of what #django was made for. On the other hand, #rails seems to be a fantastic framework to get things done. Although I do not regret any of my time spent on developing with #django I want to give @{#rails}|topic:null| a try some day in the future for the sake of curiosity.

438k views438k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Rails
Rails
NestJS
NestJS

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Nest is a framework for building efficient, scalable Node.js server-side applications. It uses progressive JavaScript, is built with TypeScript (preserves compatibility with pure JavaScript) and combines elements of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), FP (Functional Programming), and FRP (Functional Reactive Programming). Under the hood, Nest makes use of Express, but also, provides compatibility with a wide range of other libraries, like e.g. Fastify, allowing for easy use of the myriad third-party plugins which are available.

-
Extensible - Gives you true flexibility by allowing use of any other libraries thanks to modular architecture.; Versatile - An adaptable ecosystem that is a fully-fledged backbone for all kinds of server-side applications.; Progressive - Takes advantage of latest JavaScript features, bringing design patterns and mature solutions to node.js world.
Statistics
GitHub Stars
57.8K
GitHub Stars
73.3K
GitHub Forks
22.0K
GitHub Forks
8.1K
Stacks
20.2K
Stacks
2.7K
Followers
13.8K
Followers
3.0K
Votes
5.5K
Votes
326
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 860
    Rapid development
  • 653
    Great gems
  • 607
    Great community
  • 486
    Convention over configuration
  • 418
    Mvc
Cons
  • 24
    Too much "magic" (hidden behavior)
  • 14
    Poor raw performance
  • 12
    Asset system is too primitive and outdated
  • 6
    Heavy use of mixins
  • 6
    Bloat in models
Pros
  • 54
    Powerful but super friendly to work with
  • 42
    Fast development
  • 40
    Easy to understand documentation
  • 36
    Angular style syntax for the backend
  • 32
    NodeJS ecosystem
Cons
  • 10
    User base is small. Less help on Stackoverflow
  • 10
    Difficult to debug
  • 5
    Angular-like architecture
  • 3
    Updates with breaking changes
  • 3
    Javascript
Integrations
Ruby
Ruby
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Rails, NestJS?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

Symfony

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

Spring

Spring

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

Android SDK

Android SDK

Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.

Phoenix Framework

Phoenix Framework

Phoenix is a framework for building HTML5 apps, API backends and distributed systems. Written in Elixir, you get beautiful syntax, productive tooling and a fast runtime.

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