Will Rails be the new PHP?

It's the strangest thing. It's like having a blog and access to Hacker News makes self-proclaimed "seasoned" programers forget that they, too, probably had really crappy code when they started programming.

Instead of bashing green programmers who coincidentally became interested programming at the same time that Rails makes it so easy to start, why not offer them up a list of resources to make them better?

Humans are only born knowing how to cry and swallow. Nobody's born knowing how to program. Let's give Rails the props it deserves for lowering the barrier to entry for making web applications and look forward to the future where these new programmers are making things to make our lives easier.

So true. I started off writing really shitty Perl and PHP code. Some of my Java and ActionScript was also nothing to be proud off. Yet I think I write nice code today.

The key is not to be judgemental.

If you think there's a problem, don't point fingers. Go out there and help fix the problem. With compassion and understanding.

um no?

PHP "has a relatively small community, with the majority of people working under the radar and on their own?" ?

Where is he getting these stats? relative to what? For instance

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

Says PHP the language is more popular than Ruby the language (let alone the subset of Ruby programmers who use Rails). I don't get where that perceived smallness comes from. In all my experience and every way I've seen the PHP community is vastly larger than the Ruby community. Also comparing a language to a Framework seems... weird. It might make more sense to compare Rails to Drupal at least, which again, in the enterprise world, I have seen waaay more Drupal installs than Rails ones. There are a few high profile Rails sites but it quickly seems to drop off into hobby and startup. Meanwhile Drupal is just everywhere. It's surprising.

Also, accusing the PHP community of "writing below par software while charging their clients for it?" is hilarious coming from the Rails camp. Generally lowering the bar for entrance while making it easier for good devs to get good work done faster also allows more "bad" devs to enter as well. Anyone remember earlier this year that core Rails bug that allowed people to overwrite almost all data that most big Rails sites were affected by (including github)

https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/5228

I cannot understand where this viewpoint is coming from, it seems hilarious (and at best, the criticisms seem like the pot calling the kettle black).

Maybe. If Ruby / Ruby on Rails is a good language for web-development, easy for beginners to learn, the community is helpful, beginners feel welcome, and experienced developers invest in teaching; you'd expect to find a small army of 'just get it to work' developers knocking out small projects and charging too little.

I'm ok with that. Small projects get done. Not everyone needs a $125/hr consultant. Some of those projects will grow and need more experienced developers. All of those beginner developers will gain experience. Some of those beginner developers will continue to grow, learn testing, learn better software design principles and start contributing to the community.

If Ruby on Rails has, or were to have, a small army of beginner developers writing poor code on small projects and charging too little for it; I think it would be a healthy thing.

Disclosure: I got started as a Rails-first-language developer and have loved every second of it. And I try to get new people started with web-development using Rails and hope to see them get their first small projects that they can write bad code for and get paid anything for.

The level of elitism in the Ruby and by extension Rails communities never ceases to amaze me. Having attended several ruby and rails conferences over the last few years, the belief that Ruby is the language of "good programmers" is so prevalent as to be off putting.