Thread by @kyrylosilin

Notes from Rails World 2024 Opening Keynote by @dhh:

Fighting Complexity in the Web
- Rails 8 has been released
- Rails has been trying to follow the latest programming trends, but DHH was never satisfied with this approach
- Rails 7 and the introduction of ES6, HTTP2, and Importmaps brought back excitement
- DHH's work on HEY made him realize that the whole industry's approach was flawed
- Rails doesn't have to accept conventional rules

The #NOBUILD Approach
- HEY went 100% #NOBUILD (CSS and JS served directly to the browser as written)
- For 20 years, people claimed Rails doesn't scale
- @tobi proved them wrong: Shopify serves 1 million req/s in 2023
- JS minification has hindered the web as a learning platform, saving only 2-5% overhead
- We owe it to the open web to allow view source

Simplicity and Progress
- DHH composes a haiku to honor Matz: "Progress is our path, complexity builds the bridge, simplicity waits."
- Complexity is necessary for progress, but simplicity is the end goal
- Rails 7 ethos: rely on the browser
- Browser compatibility: { safari: 17.2, chrome: 120, firefox: 121, opera: 106, ie: false }
- The goal is to optimize for our limited "monkey brains"
- Rails aims to compress the complexity of modern web apps

Deployments: From HELLO WORLD to IPO
Current State of Deployments
- The industry has cultivated a fear of server management
- AWS solved a specific problem for Amazon's extreme usage spikes
- Most developers don't need such complex solutions

Cost Comparison
- Heroku's Performance M (1 core/2 threads/2.5GB RAM/$250 mo) vs. Hetzner hobby box (48 cores/96 threads/256GB RAM/$220 mo)
- DHH criticizes the markup on services like Vercel (AWS +500% markup)

The Need for "Generics" in Deployment
- DHH draws parallels to medical patents expiring after 20 years
- Calls for open-source alternatives to expensive PaaS solutions

Rails 8 Mission: NoBuild, NoPaaS
- Rails aims to eliminate the need for commercial vendors for production deployment
- The main path: deploy your application to any hardware of your choice

Learning Linux
- OMAKUB - DHH's favorite Linux environment
- Emphasizes the importance of basic security measures (e.g., denying password authentication with SSH)

Rails 8 Features
Authentication
- Rails 8 will generate authentication code instead of using Devise
- The generated code is extracted from 37signals' applications

Propshaft
- Replaces the outdated ACID pipeline
- Simpler to understand compared to Sprockets
- Designed for modern browsers, allowing direct code shipment to users

Database Innovations
- Introduction of "solid" adapters: solid_cable, solid_cache, solid_queue
- All run from "One Ring" - a single database system (SQLite)

Solid Cable
- Database-backed adapter for Action Cable
- Eliminates the need for Redis

Solid Cache
- Born out of Basecamp's needs
- Supports 10TB of caching stored for 60 days with a 96% hit rate
- Supports encryption, built on top of Active Record

Solid Queue
- Highly performant job processing system
- Works with all 3 major DBs
- Supports recurring jobs
- Processes 20M jobs per day on HEY

Thruster
- Aims to eliminate the need for nginx and other proxies
- Provides X-Sendfile acceleration, Cache-Control, and GZip compression
- Written in Go, capable of 60,000 RPS on a laptop

Kamal 2
- Deployment tool for Rails applications
- Features Auto SSL through Let's Encrypt
- Allows running multiple applications on a single server
- Includes a new proxy written in Go

Future Plans
Rails 8.1
- Action Notifier: new framework for web push notifications
- Active Record Search: alternative to Elastic Search
- Action Text with markdown support (codenamed "House MD")

Kamal 2.1
- Ongoing improvements to the deployment tool

Conclusion
- Rails 8 provides #NOBUILD and #NOPAAS solutions
- First beta of Rails 8 released on the day of the talk
- Kamal 2, Solid Queue, and other features are now live

@dhh There's a slightly longer and messier version of this post:
kyrylo.org/rails/2024/09/…