I know Ruby on Rails isn't!
Is Ruby Dying?
11–20 of 159 posts
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#12Ugh...must not take Lord's name in vain. 14 points in almost as many minutes? Is it so easy to get to the top of HackerNews on a holiday with such a loaded question? I can't imagine how many points the OP would've gotten if the title was "Is Ruby Dying Faster than MongoDB?"
That said, as a pro-Rubyist...well, I don't find much comfort in the OP's spurious assumptions about what the data can show. However, for those who think Ruby's time is limited or otherwise hate the language (or more specifically, Rails)...what do you think will take its place? Ruby seems popular because of its readable syntax...which is also a factor in its relatively slow performance...do you see an even more human friendly (and inefficient) language taking its place? Or do you think such a niche need not be filled?
That Ruby is so great for DSLs...I would hope that it can stay in that function as one of the better glue languages we have.
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#13First off, popularity of a language shouldn't be as important as you seem to make it in starting a project. Finding the right tool for the job should be much much more important, new kid in town be damned.
Second off, number of package releases doesn't tell much about maturity of packages, developer involvement, or anything. Ruby's a mature language. It's quite feasible, and arguably desirable, for package releases to slow down in time. Styles have been developed, the urgency for new features to be rolled in Right Now is lessened, and the need for components that doesn't break on upgrades becomes more and more important.
Yes, the novelty is gone. That isn't a bad thing. You know Ruby's strengths and weaknesses, you know how to use it, you know how not to use it. Jumping to a new language just because of all the jibber-jabber is not a practical thing at all.
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#14Is it that day of the week again? I would like to also point out the title of the post is misleading, as the findings are exactly the opposite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Citing this is such a knackered HN cliché it should mean an instant hell-banning.
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#15Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#16I didn't start using Ruby (or Rails) until this year. The language is nice and makes my top 3 language list.
That said, I find both Python/Django and Node.js both more productive than Rails for quickly building API-driven web-apps. More so this has to do with Rails, which has a number of warts and a tendency to require excessive configuration for all its pretty much patently false 'convention over configuration' spiels, than it does with Ruby.
If there's a problem with Ruby, it's the inseparability of it and Rails. As things like node make using non-JS languages server side less appealing, use of Rails will decline, making Ruby decline.
The main reason this hasn't happened is that there's not a standard groupthink-do-it-all toolkit for building things with node yet.
And even when it does happen it will take years and years to go away. Just look at PHP.
I'm going to go ahead and say it: Ruby will be the new PHP...
And yes, I think it's fair to assume that Ruby usage is vast majority tied to Rails.
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#17You just may not be used to Ruby not having the exciting fire of initial hype. That is dead. But that's good. Languages can't live like that forever. Sooner or later they need to stop the wild experimenting, find some best practices and things that work, and settle down and ram home the things that work. Ruby has entered final maturity. It will be in that phase until such time as it really does die, which could well…
What do you reckon could not be legacy code in 15 years? C family, Java, maybe Erlang?
I think what jerf means is that, being mostly used as a scripting and web language, it's easy to create legacy code in it. Remember ColdFusion? PHP 3?
However, more to your point, there's legacy C and Java code, but that's because those languages have evolved heavily in their time, so late 90s Java looks little like modern Java, and techniques used in C in the 80s would get you laughed at today.
Hell, even in my main language of work, C#, the difference between most code just 4 or 5 years ago and "modern" C# is vast.
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#18Google trends: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=python%20programming%...
With javascript:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=python%20programming%...
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#19my question : is ruby trying to get on pair with python regarding machine learning ?
Re: Is Ruby Dying?
#20You just may not be used to Ruby not having the exciting fire of initial hype. That is dead. But that's good. Languages can't live like that forever. Sooner or later they need to stop the wild experimenting, find some best practices and things that work, and settle down and ram home the things that work. Ruby has entered final maturity. It will be in that phase until such time as it really does die, which could well…
What do you reckon could not be legacy code in 15 years? C family, Java, maybe Erlang?
Not the OP, but I would expect to see still widely used:
* Python - As a programming language for scientists and researchers, replacing Matlab and kin.
* Go or Rust - A well-designed, modern language, easier to use than C++ but almost as fast, for enterprise applications or video games. Not sure about Google, but I hope Mozilla will still be around in 10 years.
* Lua? - Not sure about this one... but it fills a niche -- extremely compact scripting language.
* C - still used in system-level programming
* C# - C# is replacing Java as the OO language of choice for big enterprise systems.