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

Flask vs Rails

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rails
Rails
Stacks20.2K
Followers13.8K
Votes5.5K
GitHub Stars57.8K
Forks22.0K
Flask
Flask
Stacks19.3K
Followers16.2K
Votes60

Flask vs Rails: What are the differences?

In this Markdown document, I will provide the key differences between Flask and Rails, two popular web application frameworks. Flask is a micro web framework written in Python, while Rails is a web application framework written in Ruby.
  1. Ease of Learning and Simplicity: Flask is known for its simplicity and minimalistic design, making it easier to learn and understand compared to Rails. Flask follows a "micro" philosophy, offering only the essential features, while Rails incorporates many conventions and abstractions, resulting in a steeper learning curve for beginners.

  2. Development Speed: Rails is renowned for its emphasis on convention over configuration, providing many built-in tools and generators that speed up the development process. On the other hand, Flask gives developers more freedom and flexibility, allowing them to choose their preferred tools and libraries, potentially leading to slower initial development.

  3. Size and Flexibility: Flask is a lightweight framework that allows developers to customize every aspect of their applications. It provides the freedom to select third-party libraries and components tailored to specific project requirements. In contrast, Rails is a full-stack framework equipped with numerous predefined components, making it more opinionated and less flexible compared to Flask.

  4. Community and Ecosystem: Rails, being one of the oldest and most popular web application frameworks, has a large and active community. This translates into a vast and mature ecosystem of gems (libraries) and resources available to Rails developers. While Flask's community is smaller in comparison, it still provides a range of extensions and plugins, though not as extensive as Rails.

  5. Database Support: Rails relies heavily on its built-in Object Relational Mapping (ORM) called "Active Record," which simplifies database management. It seamlessly integrates with popular databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Flask, on the other hand, does not provide an ORM out-of-the-box but instead supports multiple ORMs like SQLAlchemy, allowing developers to choose the one that best fits their needs.

  6. Scalability and Performance: Rails is known for its scalability, as many large-scale applications have been built using Rails. It offers tools and techniques like caching, background processing, and load balancing, which help optimize performance and handle high traffic. Flask, being a micro framework, is better suited for small to medium-sized projects and may require additional configuration and fine-tuning for handling significant traffic.

In Summary, Flask and Rails differ in terms of simplicity, development speed, flexibility, community size, database support, and scalability/performance.

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Advice on Rails, Flask

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
Flask
Flask

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

Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
57.8K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
22.0K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
20.2K
Stacks
19.3K
Followers
13.8K
Followers
16.2K
Votes
5.5K
Votes
60
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
  • 10
    For it flexibility
  • 9
    Flexibilty and easy to use
  • 7
    User friendly
  • 6
    Secured
  • 5
    Unopinionated
Cons
  • 10
    Not JS
  • 7
    Context
  • 5
    Not fast
  • 1
    Don't has many module as in spring
Integrations
Ruby
Ruby
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Rails, Flask?

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.

ExpressJS

ExpressJS

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

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.

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