I wouldn't choose RoR as a new tech to pick up in 2022. Think of it like a more stylish PHP - lots of it out there, but mostly not in companies working on things that are compelling, and the market share is on the decline.
Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
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Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#22I had a call with a recruiter a few months back who said that the highest commissions were for Rails devs.
This would seem to indicate it is hard to find Rails devs, which itself might indicate devs don't like Ruby/Rails. If devs liked it and the market was growing as fast as devs were learning or slower, then commissions would stagnate or go down. So either the number of open jobs is increasing, devs are leaving, it's harder to learn than the sales pitch indicates, or a combination.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#23We're still starting new greenfield projects in Rails every week, and I still believe it's the best foundation for SaaS products. It's great for developer speed and efficiency, the ecosystem of gems is amazing, and we've been able to scale every project we've needed to. We're incorporating React and GraphQL more these days for complex components and APIs but they pair nicely with Rails.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#24My company uses it for multiple web apps and uses ActiveRecord for scripts too.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#25Yes, and it’s only getting better over time! Building complex front-ends, with states synced across different users, is a sheer joy using Turbo & Stimulus. It’s amazing how little JS is needed to create UIs that—when built in e.g. React—would have needed a ton of client-side code. I continue to be amazed how easy and fast it is to develop in RoR.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#26I think Ruby on Rails was the killer app that kept Ruby relevant. This kept Ruby relevant for a while but has fallen off in a lot of developer surveys. I think enough competitors in major programming languages have emerged to the point where I would consider it dying.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#27I had a call with a recruiter a few months back who said that the highest commissions were for Rails devs.
That could be because there are less and less of them. I don't think there is enough money in the world to convince me to take on a legacy RoR system.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#28I have what I call my 80/80 rule of early-stage startups, which is that for 80% of new startups, 80% of what they need is CRUD operations (create, read, update, delete). So basically, input data in this format, store it in this format, then display it in this format.
I think Rails is one of the most productive and capable frameworks for building and evolving CRUD applications, which is the reason it still remains my recommendation for new startups.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#29I have been working on a Rails app at a rapidly growing organization for the past 6 years and I consider myself very lucky to be able to do so. Shopify, GitHub, and Stripe (to name some of the more prominent companies) all regularly contribute to the Ruby and/or Rails ecosystem, and there have been loads of wonderful improvements to both over the last several years: vastly improved performance in Ruby 3, support for static typing using RBS and Sorbet, Hotwire in Rails 7 for super low-lift client-side interactivity, and many, many more.
It’s a great time to start using Ruby for web projects.
Re: Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails still relevant?
#30I think it depends on the region. I started a project in Rails, and when I tried to hire people to help I found out there are very few people in my city who know anything about Rails. It's all Python and Java here. So I'd recommend to look for job ads on local platforms and check if companies are looking for rails devs.
But hiring engineers isn't constrained by region or location so this feels like an odd argument to me.
Rails has been around long enough that there's surely no shortage of junior to very very senior engineers that will write code for you from wherever they happen to live.