Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 103 posts

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#31

Post by mohanmcgeek »

Zababa wrote: post #17

I think part of the answer to that would be "What replaced Ruby, and why?". You can start here with Rails. I know that React technically "replaced" it, at least in popularity, but React is a frontend framework. Rails has a notion of views, and React probably replaced that, but I have no idea what happened to the model and controller. Express is very popular, but it's very thin compared to Rails. There doesn't seem to…

Two things happened: Twitter switched to the JVM and posted a talk getting a few high profile Ruby consultants to do the same.

A lot of the people that I knew from that time had already switched to Sinatra for their non work related projects.

As simple as Rails was compared to what came before it (J2EE), it was still complex in ways and people felt Sinatra was simpler.

When node.js started gaining traction and people realised that they could write front-end and back-end both in the same language, people went in troves to node.js. All popular Ruby projects like passport and Passenger had a node.js version. Some others had a node equivalent quickly put together.

Some rubyists that I knew also took the route of writing everything in (a very Ruby like language called) coffeescript and compiled it to js before running it on node although this didn't last long.

For me as a kid, Rails taught me a lot of things: MVC, db migrations,relationships, HTTP and REST for which I'm grateful.

But I don't see myself using Rails again because we have tooling now that makes me more productive or atleast feel that way.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#32

Post by mohanmcgeek »

Nextgrid wrote: post #10

> even if it's easier to build something, being so hard to find affordable developers offsets every advantage you had. I think that's debatable. All these new & hyped up languages may give you cheaper developers, but you won't get the ecosystem and functionality Rails provides out of the box. JS and derivatives (TypeScript, etc) is very popular nowadays and yet on the backend something that's provided out of the box…

As someone who has worked in both rails and JavaScript ecosystems, this is untrue.

Running on rails not only increases Dev expense but also the operational expense since you would need more servers to handle a similar load. (Correct me if this has changed with Ruby 3)

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#33

Post by mohanmcgeek »

b20000 wrote: post #19

if nobody uses ruby then why are the devs super expensive? you would think that there is no demand?

FORTRAN devs are also pretty expensive. There are fewer people who can write FORTRAN and there is a lack of allure to a job that involves maintaining legacy code.

Sadly a lot of Ruby code written in 2010ish is also considered "Legacy" code and even people who previously did Ruby don't want to do it, not because of any destestment of the language. One company even specifically asked me if I would be "okay" with writing Ruby code from time to time.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#34

Post by bdcravens »

> As a startup you're start to think if you made a big mistake choosing Ruby , even if it's easier to build something, being so hard to find affordable developers offsets every advantage you had.

I think many Ruby shops go out of their way to be clever. Many apps can "color within the lines". By doing so, you can hire mid-level devs in any language and tool them up on Ruby. Way too many apps have been built in a manner where the employer has no choice to hire senior Ruby devs.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#35

Post by machiaweliczny »

johntdaly wrote: post #9
jstx1 wrote: post #7

Meta question - has any language ever made a comeback? Not in terms of quality or features (many have had significant improvements obviously) but in terms of adoption and getting back to the spot of "this is one of the go-to languages to do x".

Can any language make a comeback to its original popularity? I would argue they can’t because they where overhyped. I’m not interested in getting back to the overhyped level of popularity. That kept me away from Ruby on Rails for a while. But getting to a “mature” point where we can admin, no we are not dying and yes we are one of the better solutions for web development, would be nice. Also the job market adjust to…

Ruby will not make a comback ever again. Maybe as configuration language.

We (web dev, UI dev, game dev) need simple, fast stuff, something Go like but better. Maybe Swift? (haven't used Swift). Maybe V will deliver in the end.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#36

Post by bdcravens »

b20000 wrote: post #19

if nobody uses ruby then why are the devs super expensive? you would think that there is no demand?

ColdFusion devs aren't cheap either, and that's definitely not a popular language these days.

It's not that devs are necessary expensive, it's that senior devs are. The problem being that "easy" languages can often lead to complex balls of mud if care is not taken, and the only way forward is to hire senior devs.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#37

Post by bestinterest »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #32
Nextgrid wrote: post #10

> even if it's easier to build something, being so hard to find affordable developers offsets every advantage you had. I think that's debatable. All these new & hyped up languages may give you cheaper developers, but you won't get the ecosystem and functionality Rails provides out of the box. JS and derivatives (TypeScript, etc) is very popular nowadays and yet on the backend something that's provided out of the box…

As someone who has worked in both rails and JavaScript ecosystems, this is untrue. Running on rails not only increases Dev expense but also the operational expense since you would need more servers to handle a similar load. (Correct me if this has changed with Ruby 3)

Not sure I agree on the operational aspect in the large scheme of things. Servers are cheap, people are expensive.

Thinking out loud here, say you can only serve 200rqs with Rails but 2000rqs in some other framework (yes not fair comparison, endpoints matter etc etc). That means you need 10x the servers but take a step back a sec. 200rqs is 720k a hour or 17,280,00 a day or 518,400,000 requests a month. (The scale for that is pretty high already). I'm pretty sure the 10x increase you need in servers will cost less than 1 extra employee at say $70k a year.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#38

Post by machiaweliczny »

vr46 wrote: post #21

I am amazed at how quickly Ruby came and went. I started working with Ruby around 2004, made a decent career with it for a long time but bailed out at the very end of 2015 after the roles really weren't all that, rates weren't going up and it was pretty clear that things were no longer growing. Basically, the previous two roles at this point were very much about coding to an existing monolith that was being broken up…

Java caught up. I wonder if with green threads it will catch Go momentum.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#39

Post by pg_1234 »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #18

I have been working in RoR for a long time and, yes, it is being surpassed by other languages/frameworks, particularly python and, obviously, javascript. However, I think we are turning the corner on javascript-everywhere movement and that html-driven development is poised to make a big comeback: https://htmldriven.dev/ With the adoption of html-driven tools like hotwire, unpoly or my own project, htmx, the choice of…

Python and Typescript/Node are taking over Ruby's domain, and it's unlikely the trend will ever reverse.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#40

Post by danenania »

nicoburns wrote: post #15
johntdaly wrote: post #3

I’m a Ruby (and Rails) developer and currently write node.js code. A friend of mine that I worked with that is also a Ruby (and Rails) developer is currently working as a Python developer. I am more than willing to switch back and so is my friend. Ruby (and Rails) was fun to us and that is lacking in our current jobs. I personally am stunned when I compare the developments in Rails to the developments I see in the no…

I think the main problem for Ruby isn't Node.js, go, Rust, etc. None of those ecosystems have anything comparable to Rails. The problem is Laravel (PHP) and Django (Python) which both offer a comparable (if not better in many ways) experience to Rails with access to much bigger ecosystems.

I haven’t seen Rails devs and projects moving to php or python. They’re moving to javascript/typescript/node, go, and rust mainly, for some combination of better integration with the frontend stack, static types, and scalability/performance.

I think Rails was a victim of its own success. It’s always been great for getting projects started quickly, but now many of the early crop of “agile” startups have grown up and need solutions to large project issues that Rails doesn’t have great answers for.

Post reply on HN