It's been one year since Action Cable debuted at RailsConf 2015, and Sophie DeBenedetto is here to answer the question in the minds of many developers: what is it really like to implement "the highlight of Rails 5"? Sophie is a web developer and an instructor at the Flatiron School. Her first love is Ruby on Rails, although she has developed projects with and written about Rails, Ember and Phoenix.

Recent years have seen the rise of "the real-time web." Web apps we use every day rely on real-time features—the sort of features that let you see new posts magically appearing at the top of your feeds without having to lift a finger.

While we may take those features...

Today, we're thrilled to host Jacob Kaplan-Moss. Jacob's a former Herokai and long-time core contributor to Django, and he's here to share an in-depth look at something that he believes will define the future of the framework.

When Django was created, over ten years ago, the web was a less complicated place. The majority of web pages were static. Database-backed, Model/View/Controller-style web apps were the new spiffy thing. Ajax was barely starting to be used, and only in narrow contexts.

The web circa 2016 is significantly more powerful. The last few years have seen the rise of the so-called “real-time” web: apps with much higher interaction between clients and servers and...