Never Look Back - Introduction
Introduction: The End of a Journey, The Start of Another
Every software developer has a path, a winding road of languages, frameworks, and philosophies that shapes their craft. My own journey has taken me through the structured landscapes of Pascal, the raw power of C++, and the wild, chaotic frontier of early PHP web development. For a long time, I was a journeyman, picking up tools as I needed them, solving problems, and moving on. Then came the era of frameworks, promising order, productivity, and a “right way” to build things. And for a significant part of the web’s history, the undisputed king of that era was Ruby on Rails.
I, like many others, was drawn to its siren song. The promise of “developer happiness,” the sheer speed of scaffolding a new application, the elegance of the Ruby language—it was intoxicating. I built things with Rails. I saw its power. But as my main projects matured and my focus shifted towards long-term stability, scalability, and a different kind of developer experience, I found myself drifting away.
Then I discovered Elixir and the Phoenix framework. It wasn’t just a new tool; it was a new way of thinking about building software for the web. After completing my first major project in Phoenix, I powered down the Rails server for the last time on a production app and, without any conscious decision or dramatic fanfare, I simply never went back. This isn’t a story of hate for a technology I once used. It’s a story of finding a better home. This is a review of that journey, an exploration of the fundamental differences that made looking back an impossibility. It’s about why, for me, a Phoenix has truly risen from the ashes of my Rails days.