The Power of `rails c`

When the team and decided to migrate from a Ruby on Rails backend to a JavaScript backend, we went with the thinking by having our whole web stack, from frontend to backend, in a single programming language, life would be easier.

A single language programming stack is really nice. Reusing patterns, styles, simpler debugging, etc.

One thing the team and I really missed:

Rails Console

I haven’t used another backend web framework that has an interactive console. I took this feature of Ruby on Rails for granted and when I realized there isn’t a JavaScript version, I really miss rails c!

The Rails Console is a feature I use in development (i.e. jamming out code) and even in production (i.e. fixing database entries and making sure all the relationships update auto-magically.)

As a programmer, getting another way to approach the code is invaluable.

I love using the Rails Console to zoom in, get the whole backend application setup, running, and interactively engage with it. I scope the problem right to the running environment and poke around with essentially what is running on production.

Basically, I reduce my cognitive load and just play in the real system I’m building on.

This is why I still use Ruby on Rails as my goto web framework - no matter what other programming languages are in the tech stack.