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Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

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Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

Zababa wrote: post #60
going_to_800 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. faster as speed or development? Gem ecosystem in Ruby makes it super fast to develop stuff, I'm not sure is there any ecosystem that rich with up to date libraries.

> Gem ecosystem in Ruby makes it super fast to develop stuff, I'm not sure is there any ecosystem that rich with up to date libraries. Pretty much every ecosystem has a package manager and ecosystem, I don't think Ruby is anything unique here.

The upthread comment isn't commenting on the existence of the package manager by the coverage of the ecosystem; every language has an ecosystem, but they aren't all equivalent.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#62

Post by ksec »

>I know that many of you will say Ruby is doing fine...

You have described what I have been crying about since 2016.

Rails is definitely in a negative feedback loop. And I am not even sure if Shopify and Github are enough to pull it out.

And there are lots of reddit threads about Junior Ruby Developers unable to find a job. As nearly all jobs are looking for Senior Dev.

The only way to solve a problem is to accept it is a problem. And right now as you said, most still think the ecosystem is doing fine.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#63

Post by noodle »

ksec wrote: post #62

>I know that many of you will say Ruby is doing fine... You have described what I have been crying about since 2016. Rails is definitely in a negative feedback loop. And I am not even sure if Shopify and Github are enough to pull it out. And there are lots of reddit threads about Junior Ruby Developers unable to find a job. As nearly all jobs are looking for Senior Dev. The only way to solve a problem is to accept it…

> And there are lots of reddit threads about Junior Ruby Developers unable to find a job. As nearly all jobs are looking for Senior Dev.

This is true for basically every tech stack though. The pandemic gave a lot of people a chance to change careers, so there's a lot of fresh blood looking for work right now across the board, and not enough space to hire and then mentor them.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#64

Post by Zababa »

dragonwriter wrote: post #61
Zababa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gem ecosystem in Ruby makes it super fast to develop stuff, I'm not sure is there any ecosystem that rich with up to date libraries. Pretty much every ecosystem has a package manager and ecosystem, I don't think Ruby is anything unique here.

The upthread comment isn't commenting on the existence of the package manager by the coverage of the ecosystem; every language has an ecosystem, but they aren't all equivalent.

I doubt the Ruby ecosystem is the largest out here. In terms of packages, npm more than 1 million, Maven Central (Java) 438k, PyPi (Python) 336k, Packagist (PHP) 323k, NuGet (C#) 260k, CPAN (Perl) 202k, Ruby has 170k gems, Rust 70k, Elixir 16k, Haskell 16k OCaml 3445. I couldn't find information for Go, and nothing specific for Scala and Clojure. Out of those the most comparable are Java, Python, PHP and C# due to the existance of Spring, Python, Laravel and ASP.NET competing against Rails. All of them have a bigger ecosystem compared to Ruby. In terms of scripting languages, Perl, Python and JS all have bigger ecosystems.

Of course you could reply about the quality of packages, but first, that's moving the goalposts, and second, why would the Ruby ecosystem be any better?

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#65

Post by dragonwriter »

Zababa wrote: post #64
dragonwriter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upthread comment isn't commenting on the existence of the package manager by the coverage of the ecosystem; every language has an ecosystem, but they aren't all equivalent.

I doubt the Ruby ecosystem is the largest out here. In terms of packages, npm more than 1 million, Maven Central (Java) 438k, PyPi (Python) 336k, Packagist (PHP) 323k, NuGet (C#) 260k, CPAN (Perl) 202k, Ruby has 170k gems, Rust 70k, Elixir 16k, Haskell 16k OCaml 3445. I couldn't find information for Go, and nothing specific for Scala and Clojure. Out of those the most comparable are Java, Python, PHP and C# due to th…

> I doubt the Ruby ecosystem is the largest out here

“Largest” and “most likely to have what going_to_800 needs in practice” are not the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#66

Post by Zababa »

dragonwriter wrote: post #65
Zababa wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the Ruby ecosystem is the largest out here. In terms of packages, npm more than 1 million, Maven Central (Java) 438k, PyPi (Python) 336k, Packagist (PHP) 323k, NuGet (C#) 260k, CPAN (Perl) 202k, Ruby has 170k gems, Rust 70k, Elixir 16k, Haskell 16k OCaml 3445. I couldn't find information for Go, and nothing specific for Scala and Clojure. Out of those the most comparable are Java, Python, PHP and C# due to th…

> I doubt the Ruby ecosystem is the largest out here “Largest” and “most likely to have what going_to_800 needs in practice” are not the same thing.

Come on, I already talked about that moving the goalposts things. Ruby is mostly used for monolithic web developement, and then scripts. This is covered by bigger ecosystems.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#67

Post by jacquesm »

dnissley wrote: post #24
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".

If you believe the TIOBE index, the popularity of python peaked around 2008-2009 and then slid to a low around 2014-2015 -- and now it's more popular than it's ever been. https://www.notonlycode.org/content/images/2020/09/Screensho...

That's mostly due to the popularity of Python in machine learning like projects. It's ideal for plumbing and Numpy/Tensorflow and CUDA bindings make it fast enough for real work.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#68

Post by metaltyphoon »

dvogel wrote: post #54
herbst wrote: post #2

I don't think Ruby 3 will change anything with that. I am one of those who never jumped the boat and still doing their daily coding with ruby, rails & co. The ecosystem changed a lot, as it always did. Many youngsters learn that single language works everywhere, learn that server and frontend may share their code. If they end up using Rails they likely spend more time in their react files than anywhere else. The reas…

One of the biggest issues ruby faces is performance. The productivity of the language is undeniable. That is a big reason start-ups so often choose ruby. Eventually Salesforce or Microsoft acquires these ruby start-ups though that the apps run up against enterprise managers who have traditional baroque "cost optimization" incentives. Very few people, especially managers, are comfortable making the argument that payin…

You are saying this as if C# is not a ridiculous productive language.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#69

Post by metaltyphoon »

horsawlarway wrote: post #46

As someone who missed the early Rails train, I'm not really seeing a lot to love anymore. It seems like Rails tried to do exactly what MSFT was doing with ASP.net - Give an excellent set of defaults you don't have to think about. The problem with that (and it's the same problem in Rails) is that "excellent defaults" change rapidly - much more rapidly than most production code-bases. So you end up with outdated defaul…

Are we talking classic asp or core? The former is dog shit while the latter is quiet nice.

Re: Ask HN: Will Ruby Get a Comeback?

#70

Post by metaltyphoon »

Zababa wrote: post #64
dragonwriter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upthread comment isn't commenting on the existence of the package manager by the coverage of the ecosystem; every language has an ecosystem, but they aren't all equivalent.

I doubt the Ruby ecosystem is the largest out here. In terms of packages, npm more than 1 million, Maven Central (Java) 438k, PyPi (Python) 336k, Packagist (PHP) 323k, NuGet (C#) 260k, CPAN (Perl) 202k, Ruby has 170k gems, Rust 70k, Elixir 16k, Haskell 16k OCaml 3445. I couldn't find information for Go, and nothing specific for Scala and Clojure. Out of those the most comparable are Java, Python, PHP and C# due to th…

Package number is not enough. For example, .NET’s BCL is probably the largest of all the languages you shown where the other ecosystems would have to provide what it covers.
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