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Ruby Together

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Re: Ruby Together

#81

I'm a a typescript/java engineer. I would say my lifetime code stats are probably around 40% JS / 35% Typescript / 15% Java / 8% Python / 2% other. That is to say, I've barely ever written any Ruby outside of the occasional little script. And yet it's secretly my favorite language. I wish I wasn't afraid that demand for it would vanish over time, which makes me reluctant to invest skills in its ecosystem. It seems so…

Unlike other languages, ruby is mainly driven by one application - Rails. As newer web FWs come, it's hard to see Rails keep up. The trends for Rails does not look good for the past 5 years [1]. I am hopeful that natalie [2] will work. If it does, it will remove the biggest downside to ruby.

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

[2] https://github.com/natalie-lang/natalie

Re: Ruby Together

#82

I'm a a typescript/java engineer. I would say my lifetime code stats are probably around 40% JS / 35% Typescript / 15% Java / 8% Python / 2% other. That is to say, I've barely ever written any Ruby outside of the occasional little script. And yet it's secretly my favorite language. I wish I wasn't afraid that demand for it would vanish over time, which makes me reluctant to invest skills in its ecosystem. It seems so…

When I was contracting full time, a _very_ large portion of my time was paid for in Rails work. Something like 90%. I market myself as a true generalist, basically a CTO-for-hire, and still the contracts I landed almost always involved Rails in some way.

To me that is sensible in that a strongly opinionated framework is conducive to hiring temporary talent into.

Not to disagree with your conclusion just that it seems likely to bias in favor of ruby and rails.

Re: Ruby Together

#83
post #49

[flagged]

Pretty sure "start sharing the opening keynote stage with other contributors" doesn't mean "DHH cannot contribute any keynote at RailsConf" and he's blowing it out of proportion for drama's sake because he doesn't have a filter. (Not that that's historically been a problem, he's always been very outspoken and non-PC.)

Re: Ruby Together

#84
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was contracting full time, a _very_ large portion of my time was paid for in Rails work. Something like 90%. I market myself as a true generalist, basically a CTO-for-hire, and still the contracts I landed almost always involved Rails in some way.

To me that is sensible in that a strongly opinionated framework is conducive to hiring temporary talent into. Not to disagree with your conclusion just that it seems likely to bias in favor of ruby and rails.

That wasnt it at all. It was a lack of available talent. So many rails devs have "moved on" and theres a real supply/demand problem in the market in terms of running software vs available devs.

Re: Ruby Together

#85

I'm a a typescript/java engineer. I would say my lifetime code stats are probably around 40% JS / 35% Typescript / 15% Java / 8% Python / 2% other. That is to say, I've barely ever written any Ruby outside of the occasional little script. And yet it's secretly my favorite language. I wish I wasn't afraid that demand for it would vanish over time, which makes me reluctant to invest skills in its ecosystem. It seems so…

I'll be honest, I'm worried too. I'm a fullstack dev, but I consider myself a decent rubyist. I've been writing it for about 10 years and have spoken at rubyconf a few times. All else being equal, I just like the language itself. The points others make here are true, there are a ton of ruby shops, and demand for someone with a couple years of rails experience is still quite high. But the issue is not where ruby is no…

Why would startups stop using it? Thats going to be the bread-and-butter for as long as I can imagine. It is one of the _most_ productive frameworks for a small/solo team, and makes way too much sense for a POC or anything CRUD oriented.

Re: Ruby Together

#86
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would convince you? * top companies using it? (shopify, github, stripe) * number of stars on github for projects? https://github.com/rails/rails has 50k stars * place in the Redmonk language rankings? https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2021/08/05/language-rankings-6-2... shows it at #9 * ability to get a good paying job? https://marketing.dice.com/pdf/2020/Dice_2020_Tech_Salary_Re... has the ruby salary at 114k, more t…

There is no need to sway anyone because there is nothing to sway. Javascript is eating the web and interest in Ruby/Rails is declining, measurably: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0... That is not to say that you can't get a job and you might win the market by doing something increasingly rare in relatively high demand. Or you might not. Or you might do ruby for a multitude of other reasons…

As you said everyone and his sister knows javascript, JS devs are a commodity. I don't think anyone can expect to secure his future by picking up something like JS or Python since there are tens of millions of people learning it right now. So the popularity of the language means just that - everyone knows it. There are more jobs but way more people applying.

Nor is Ruby a secure bet, nothing is really. Ruby is niche but it still has a very strong community, there is almost nothing web related Rails and the community haven't solved. I think people overrate the importance of community size. Does it matter if JS has 10 million devs or 20 million? Not really imo. Maybe even 10 is better than 20, less decision fatigue.

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