It's annoying to me that mastodon isn't more like Synapse + Element. Looking through the code (and unless I'm missing something obvious), the mastodon front-end is super duper integrated with the code for the webserver. It's more annoying than I first realized to separate the two.

Also I'm no Ruby on Rails expert by any means (actually hardly know it at all), but having a call to Rails in the Javascript that works the front-end seems.......... weird. Is that standard for a Ruby on Rails webapp?

Like ah yes okay this is the front-end code, no problem.... Wait.... What

Can someone with some Ruby experience explain this to me?

I miss the good old days of 'here's my frontend, it's html and Javascript' and 'here's my backend, it exposes this api that you can whack any front end on' and 'here's my database, the backend connects to it through these very well documented and clear functions'.

Not 'here's this whole fucking tangled mess where who the fuck knows what's happening'. That's what Ruby seems like to me?

Holy shit, is this why mastodon still doesn't have a proper REST api for handling admin stuff like defederating? Because that logic is actually in the frontend somehow? I will have to investigate this.