136: Michael Chan - React Is Not a Rails Competitor

In this episode of Fullstack Radio, I talked to Michael Chan about why React is not a Rails competitor and why we're all still gonna be building bespoke back ends for years to come. This is Fullstack Radio episode one thirty six. So okay. The reason I wanted to have you on the show a while ago I don't have the date on this because I only have a screenshot and I'm too lazy to find the real tweet. You tweeted, so many developers will never experience the unadulterated bliss of running rails new. No other framework gives you as much useful structure and tooling out of the box. And I saw this tweet and I thought, I'm glad that I'm seeing someone from, like, the front end space kind of say this because I feel like there's this, like, gap that I haven't been able to cross, which is, like, how are all these people who identify as, like, React developers, like, building real stuff and putting it on the Internet if they're not still also using tools that let them talk to a freaking database? You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think a best place to start maybe would just be to learn a little bit more about, like, your kind of journey as a developer because it's I've been looking forever to find someone who I felt, like, knew the the rails world back in the day and is super tightly integrated into the, React ecosystem today. So, like, how did you get started? What sort of stuff do you have experience with? What's your story? Yeah. So I started I think one of the first technical books that I bought was, was something to do with Rails or, like, I don't know, one of the early Rails books and then also an early Ruby book. Yep. I think it was right around the time that, DHH had made that talk and he was, like, showing you how to build a blog in fifteen minutes. And I was, like, oh my gosh. Like, I don't know anything about programming, but, like, that capability looks like something that I want to invest into personally. Got it. Unfortunately, like, Rails really does require, some previous programming knowledge. It's not a beginner friendly framework. And I think I've learned, like, since then that it's, it gives you a lot of tools if you're a capable developer already. But it's not really like a, hey, like, this is this is a great first introduction into programming. It's not it's not that at all. If you don't have the the the pain points and, like, the problems, then you don't really appreciate the solutions that that Rails has given you. And so, I I mean, I couldn't I couldn't do it. I couldn't hack it. And a friend mine was like, hey, just like like, forget all that framework stuff. Just, like, learn PHP and, like, throw up a couple …