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  1. Stackups
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  5. MEAN vs Rails

MEAN vs Rails

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rails
Rails
Stacks20.2K
Followers13.8K
Votes5.5K
GitHub Stars57.8K
Forks22.0K
MEAN
MEAN
Stacks337
Followers617
Votes594
GitHub Stars12.1K
Forks3.4K

MEAN vs Rails: What are the differences?

  1. Language and Frameworks: MEAN stack comprises MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js, while Rails is based on Ruby language and Ruby on Rails framework. This difference in technologies leads to variations in development approaches and toolsets used in building web applications.
  2. Client-Side Rendering: Angular JS, a part of the MEAN stack, enables client-side rendering, which can enhance the user experience by reducing the load on the server. In contrast, Rails traditionally utilizes server-side rendering, which can affect the performance of web applications, especially when dealing with large amounts of data.
  3. Scalability and Performance: MEAN stack applications are often considered more scalable due to the non-blocking nature of Node.js, which allows for handling concurrent connections efficiently. Rails, on the other hand, may face scalability challenges as the application grows and traffic increases, requiring additional optimizations to maintain performance.
  4. Community Support: Ruby on Rails has a well-established community with a wealth of resources, gems, and plugins readily available for developers. In comparison, while the MEAN stack community is growing rapidly, it may not offer the same breadth of resources and support as Rails.
  5. Learning Curve: MEAN stack, with its JavaScript-based technologies, may have a lower learning curve for developers already familiar with JavaScript. In contrast, Ruby on Rails has its own conventions and best practices that developers need to learn, which could potentially result in a steeper learning curve.
  6. Flexibility and Convention Over Configuration: Rails follows the principle of "convention over configuration," providing a set of defaults that streamline development but may limit flexibility. In contrast, MEAN stack technologies offer greater flexibility in choosing how to structure applications, making it suitable for projects where specific customization is required.

In Summary, MEAN stack emphasizes flexibility, client-side rendering, and scalability, while Rails focuses on convention, server-side rendering, and community support.

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Advice on Rails, MEAN

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
MEAN
MEAN

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

MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) is a boilerplate that provides a nice starting point for MongoDB, Node.js, Express, and AngularJS based applications. It is designed to give you a quick and organized way to start developing MEAN based web apps with useful modules like Mongoose and Passport pre-bundled and configured.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
57.8K
GitHub Stars
12.1K
GitHub Forks
22.0K
GitHub Forks
3.4K
Stacks
20.2K
Stacks
337
Followers
13.8K
Followers
617
Votes
5.5K
Votes
594
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
  • 86
    Javascript
  • 62
    Easy
  • 58
    Nosql
  • 52
    Great community
  • 50
    Modularity
Integrations
Ruby
Ruby
MongoDB
MongoDB
Node.js
Node.js
ExpressJS
ExpressJS
AngularJS
AngularJS

What are some alternatives to Rails, MEAN?

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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