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Is Ruby Dying?

jmoses.co

101–110 of 159 posts

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#101
post #29
post #7

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What do you reckon could not be legacy code in 15 years? C family, Java, maybe Erlang?

I expect the JVM to still be going; at least one of Clojure or Scala will probably continue growing for a long time, and there's room for both. It's also possible another Algol-esque language that isn't Java, but is syntactically closer to Java, making people more comfortable, will arise. At some point one of them may even become the "primary" JVM language, with Java hanging on as legacy, but due to the fact Java jus…

You seem down on both C and C++, but there will always be demand for languages that allow you to control memory.

Rust looks promising, but it's way too early to tell if it can really replace C/C++.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#102
post #83

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"For a Google-backed language to replace Rails" It's not "replacing Rails", it's replacing new projects in what are today scripting languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc.). I see fewer people talking about Dart than I see doing things with Go. That said, I did finally beat Google Trends into producing [1], which is interesting. It was hard to convince Trends to show Dart as growing as quickly as Golang, though, so…

Go's been out 4 years while Dart just hit 1.0 and requires a runtime as it's a bit less portable. Once Dart lands in Chrome, I can easily imagine it becoming the first choice of developers who prefer to develop code in their browser. A niche market now, but interesting to contemplate. I'm a bit more flexible when it comes to trying to predict the future than my posts indicate. I'm just offering an alternative hypothe…

Oh, I see, that makes sense.

For me, I was making broad predictions. No matter how exciting the web client dev is, it is and will remain still a niche, and Dart faces a huge challenge in the next 5 years as asm.js will relatively suddenly introduce it to competition from every other mainstream language in existence. Dart probably won't "die" for a while, but I'm not sure it won't end up "just another" one of the enormous pile of languages that it will be possible to do client-side programming in.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#103
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why group rust and go? Rust allows control over memory and go does not, which seems like a huge difference.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#104

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"C# - C# is replacing Java as the OO language of choice for big enterprise systems." C# is held back by windows. I know there is mono, but enterprises aren't going to bet on mono. So I have to disagree with that.

C# is held back by windows "The enterprise" (for the most part) isn't held back by Windows. That's just reality.

> "The enterprise" (for the most part) isn't held back by Windows.

Or, rather, much of "the enterprise" is committed to being held back by Windows, so a language being tied to windows doesn't hinder enterprise adoption.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#106
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What makes you think Google won't be around. If they weren't, I'd put Mozilla on the chopping block as well.

[1]http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/11/21/mozillas-reliance-g...

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#107
post #39
post #32

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What about Catalyst? Or Mojolicious? Or Dancer? If it's just used in legacy code, why are there still healthy frameworks being produced (granted, these aren't as popular as Rails, but, Perl on the web is hardly in legacy mode)?

I personally haven't seen any new code being written in Perl during either my time in England or in the Bay Area. I don't really see a reason to use Perl when there are languages like Python and Ruby out there with easier learning curves and which are just as, if not more powerful (would be happy to learn some good reasons, though).

>>easier learning curves and which are just as, if not more powerful (would be happy to learn some good reasons, though).

This may be true for Ruby to some extent.

But Python as a design goal aims to provide as little power to the programmer as possible. In fact, the Zen of Python says almost anything that comes in the way should and must be sacrificed to achieve readability.

One can probably write a book on why one must use Perl. In short, nothing really gets work done as Perl does. That one fact hasn't changed since the past 26 years of Perl's existence.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#108

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Citing this is such a knackered HN cliché it should mean an instant hell-banning.

Shouldn't submitting things that fit Betteridge's Law should get you banned instead? Why ban the symptoms?

My comment was tongue in cheek, but there is no way one would realise that just by reading it. I don't really think people should be hell-banned for it, being down-voted into oblivion would suffice :)

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in Manchester. I write new Perl code. Python is Perl with a little nicer syntax and a shitload of baggage from overly opinionated people. Ruby is Perl with a little nicer syntax and no other advantages. I have found no compelling reason to switch, and lots of annoyances that don't seem to exist in Perl.

I'm actually a big fan of Perl, but your characterization of Ruby is wrong. Ruby is Perl with object-orientation first, nicer syntax is a minor detail after that.

If Ruby has nice syntax then Smalltalk should be the syntax of the Gods ;)

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#110
post #96

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> Someone will probably be writing an OS kernel in Rust. There are two or three of these, at least at the stage where kmain is Rust code. I'd be really excited to see this develop further. I just don't have time for ever project I'd like to do :/

By that prediction, I did not just mean that someone wrote something in Rust that can boot and do kernel-y things... I mean that there will be a kernel project in progress that is not merely "intended to be serious competition someday", but something that you can seriously use for real, production projects as your computer's (or server's, or cell phone's, or something's) primary kernel/hypervisor/the thing actually r…

Absolutely, I agree. I was just trying to say that hopefully, there's some intrepid coder out there trying to do this, and that we have a few people who have started. We'll see where they are in a few years. :)
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