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Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
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Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#2They are ubiquitous and compliment each other in full stack entry level developer roles.
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#3Because it's easier for people to deal with than real programming languages like C++ and Erlang.
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#4JavaScript is a must know if you want to do web work. It's as necessary as HTML. It's the only language browsers actually natively run.
Ruby on Rails is sort of the basis for most any other modern MVC web framework. That is to say it inspired nearly every other web MVC framework, in most other languages. If you can use Rails you'll be able to use most anything else. Prior to Rails most web apps had proprietary frameworks powering them or no framework and were just an bunch of "pages" (endpoints) loosely strung together.
Rails also, for better or worse, has one of the easiest to use ORMs-- ActiveRecord. This helps new folks worry less about the intricacies of learning SQL (or whatever your persistence layer is) and more so about what writing a web service is really about.
Ruby as a language is also very expressive, is truly object oriented, and has all the right building blocks (that's kind of a pun actually), plus a very large amount of documentation and examples. It also is very good for meta programming which is what enables a lot of the rails magic (and fun).
At the end of the day learning more languages like PHP, Python, Java after Ruby is fairly trivial. I always tell noobs to learn whatever is useful for them, and stop worrying about what language.
I started with Ruby 10 years ago and now can write Java, PHP, Python, Scala, Elixir, Objective-C, and Swift; though I am by no means an expert in all of them. At some point you'll realize you've learned concepts and they're what is important. Not syntax.
P.s. don't let my username fool you ;) I'm just unfortunately hipster.
Edit: added some thoughts on why your first language isn't so relevant and a bit of clarity.
Edit 2: fixed absent minded use of rails where I should've written ruby.
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#5Programming concepts come more easily the more gradually they are revealed. Nobody has any concept of what a stack overflow is or why it's important on day 1. Ruby is approachable and fairly forgiving and (at least in MY opinion) VERY readable.
Full disclosure: I went to engineering school for 2 degree and then later attended (and currently work for) a code school.
I can say that I can see a marked difference in students that go through Ruby as a first programming language vs JS. Ruby-first students are more ready to deal with new ways of doing things and they are, in general, less likely to have serious learning issues. JS-first students tend to have more consistent problems grasping things like scope and return values. It IS possible it's bent as such due to our curriculum, but all I can tell you is what I've seen in our students.
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#6JavaScript is a must know if you want to do web work. It's as necessary as HTML. It's the only language browsers actually natively run. Ruby on Rails is sort of the basis for most any other modern MVC web framework. That is to say it inspired nearly every other web MVC framework, in most other languages. If you can use Rails you'll be able to use most anything else. Prior to Rails most web apps had proprietary framew…
[relevant username]
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#7My guess is that they are the flavor of the month (knowing only Rails+JS is widely employable), and have a low enough barrier to entry that you can realistically teach someone enough to be useful in the timescale of a bootcamp. Add a little HTML/CSS and you can do front end as well.
I think the auto-magicness of Rails helps, since it gives you so much even if you are relatively inexperienced. Then you have a jumping off point, to start learning on the job, earning money and you can ostensibly choose your own adventure from there.
edit: I'm not sure what's objectionable about this comment. I'm new here and trying to be helpful, so if I've gone against some rule, I'd like to know so I can learn from it.
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#8Ask ten people to write a hello world in js, and they all will do it, and do it the exactly same way - this is great for a production language. On that point, JS is as good as C/Cxx
The downside - ask 10 people for an example of proper use of advanced oop in js, and out of these 10 you will get 5 passible anwers all of which will be drastically different - horrid thing for production
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#9I'd guess Javascript is quite popular[0] because it's literally on every modern computer and has incredible reach[1]. It's also a bit of a kitchen-sink language so students can grow into a style and paradigm that suits them. Plus there's nothing to install to get started... just open a browser.
[0] http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/javascript/ [1] https://tessel.io/ https://www.sitepoint.com/creating-webgl-game-unity-5-javasc... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sETJs2_jwo
Re: Ask HN: Why do coding bootcamps teach Ruby on Rails and JavaScript?
#10Look at the goals of a bootcamp in the first place - to get you just enough knowledge to have the minimum skill needed to be useful to a team. They are not trying to make you a computer scientist... they are trying to teach you as little as possible, while still knowing enough to get work done, which means knowing how to work with a toolkit that does most of the work for you. And RoR does that. It also is popular enough that once you know it, you can probably find a team using it that needs help.
And why JS? Because that is what runs in the browsers.