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Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

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Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#351

Post by joelbluminator »

dang wrote: post #349
joelbluminator wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or...you are working on way smaller Elixir projects. Lets see how fun it is to inherit a million line old Elixir project 7 years from now. Or a million line codebase split into 50 services. I am sure you'll be productive as hell cos Elixir!

Flamewar comments like this are not ok on HN and will get you banned if you do it repeatedly. Please make your substantive points without swipes. Also, please keep tedious programming language flamewar like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29288298 off HN. We're trying for something more interesting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&…

Ban away dude, who cares.

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#352

Post by montblanc »

oblio wrote: post #347
joelbluminator wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopify is not a unicorn...sorry for nitpicking. Its a publicly traded company worth 210 billion dollars. It used to be a unicorn a long time ago.

Now that I think of it, are there any major startups launched post Rails glory days? Some time around and before Rails 4.0, so 2013. Almost all the major former startups that I could find are from 2010 or earlier.

Depends on your definition of major. For a company to become a unicorn it usually takes 7 years (not sure on the number but it keeps changing). So many companies formed in 2015,16...+ aren't there still. Looking in Linkedin for Rails jobs there are a lot, not all of them are old companies. Gitlab is a very famous name(2014) but it too IPO'ed so it's not a startup anymore.

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#353

Post by montblanc »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #273
horsawlarway wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a pleasant experience to come on board and deal with a typeless, styleless, inconsistent mess. And that's what Ruby on Rails will create, unless you spend an inordinate amount of effort on adding back all the tooling you need to make functional software in large groups. Even then - there's no real path to a mature and maintainable language/framework. In my area (Atlanta) we're seeing a glut of RoR devs avail…

Elixir is also dynamically typed but due to its pattern matching and immutability, I've found it eliminates about 90% of the issues that I've found with dynamic typing in other languages. It's still got most of what made Ruby a joy to work with and several unique advantages, too!

Lots of people complain about Elixir's lack of types and possible incomprehensible mess caused by Macros. It kinda proves to me that everyone has different tastes in software and that's about it, there is no objective truth to any of it. For me Java code is a nightmare.

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#354

Post by montblanc »

shafyy wrote: post #339
chowchowchow wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this exact realization getting ramped up in a large rails codebase: ruby is optimized for experience of the code author, while most of the things people miss from it (explicit imports, static types) help with code maintenance and codebase scalability. The small/large project distinction makes sense to me. I think there’s a clear point in project size where the joy of writing code has to be deprioritized behind…

> I think there’s a clear point in project size where the joy of writing code has to be deprioritized behind maintainability and simplicity, even if it becomes less fun to write code that way. I completely disagree. Joy of writing code must always be a top priority, also in large codebases. There are enough examples of where Ruby (on Rails ) is used in large codebases with GitHub, Shopify, etc. I guess it's a matter…

Gitlab, Discourse, Mastodon, Forem (dev.to) etc etc. All are big OSS software and are maintainable and seem to have quite a high velocity feature development. If it was an unmaintainable mess the whole opens source thing wouldn't have worked as well as it does for them. So maybe we should steer the debate towards - it CAN be done (as you can see) but it's more difficult with Rails (which I think is false).

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#355

Post by inopinatus »

eximius wrote: post #126
inopinatus wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that, there's object.method(:name).source object.method(:name).source_location but frankly this is still thinking in a rigid mindset that suits other languages better. Ruby isn't just "dynamic dispatch"; a typical metaprogramming technique handles all incoming calls without named methods, or by dynamically writing the code. To put it bluntly, assuming there's a method on the other side of your message, is practic…

While freeing to write, that is horrifying to inherit.

That isn’t code you write in an application. The topic was how to find a method’s handler, this is how it’s done in the REPL.

Or if you mean, dynamically instantiated methods, those are found throughout Ruby and its ecosystem, and the reason it isn’t horrifying is that the language has terrific support at the REPL for developers needing reflection.

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#356

Post by chowchowchow »

shafyy wrote: post #339
chowchowchow wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this exact realization getting ramped up in a large rails codebase: ruby is optimized for experience of the code author, while most of the things people miss from it (explicit imports, static types) help with code maintenance and codebase scalability. The small/large project distinction makes sense to me. I think there’s a clear point in project size where the joy of writing code has to be deprioritized behind…

> I think there’s a clear point in project size where the joy of writing code has to be deprioritized behind maintainability and simplicity, even if it becomes less fun to write code that way. I completely disagree. Joy of writing code must always be a top priority, also in large codebases. There are enough examples of where Ruby (on Rails ) is used in large codebases with GitHub, Shopify, etc. I guess it's a matter…

Well, sometimes joyfully written code can be less than joyful for those who have to read & maintain it…

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#357

Post by tmm84 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #264
chowchowchow wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this exact realization getting ramped up in a large rails codebase: ruby is optimized for experience of the code author, while most of the things people miss from it (explicit imports, static types) help with code maintenance and codebase scalability. The small/large project distinction makes sense to me. I think there’s a clear point in project size where the joy of writing code has to be deprioritized behind…

It's not a pleasant experience to come on board and deal with a typeless, styleless, inconsistent mess. And that's what Ruby on Rails will create, unless you spend an inordinate amount of effort on adding back all the tooling you need to make functional software in large groups. Even then - there's no real path to a mature and maintainable language/framework. In my area (Atlanta) we're seeing a glut of RoR devs avail…

This has been my experience. I gave into learning Ruby and how things can be written several different ways. Even when tools like Rubocop and the like are used it still can result in a codebase that is very difficult to use.

My opinion, typed/tooled is useful when the desired solution/behavior/concept is complex.

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#358

Post by regularfry »

jeremyjh wrote: post #229
revskill wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the ease of installation of Ruby, RoR and deployment to Heroku. It's cross-platform. So u can bring your application to production in like 30 mins. In era 2010, .NET stack couldn't offer you that. I wrote about 4 production application in Ruby stack in 6 months, it's super productive and the Ruby language has OOP/FP done right in comparison of other languages, too.

The only reason this seems special to you is because its your story. Your story could have happened with a lot of different languages though.

One part of the story that's probably relevant is that RoR makes getting started with relational databases easy. That can be extremely intimidating otherwise; I meet a lot of juniors who have never touched them and don't know where to start.

Because it does cover the full stack, in a way that devs in a conventional enterprise wouldn't ordinarily do, and gives you pretty good hand-holding while you do it, it takes a lot of the fear out of parts that might otherwise look intimidatingly complex.

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#359

Post by oblio »

montblanc wrote: post #352
oblio wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I think of it, are there any major startups launched post Rails glory days? Some time around and before Rails 4.0, so 2013. Almost all the major former startups that I could find are from 2010 or earlier.

Depends on your definition of major. For a company to become a unicorn it usually takes 7 years (not sure on the number but it keeps changing). So many companies formed in 2015,16...+ aren't there still. Looking in Linkedin for Rails jobs there are a lot, not all of them are old companies. Gitlab is a very famous name(2014) but it too IPO'ed so it's not a startup anymore.

Gitlab definitely counts ;-)

Re: Where is Ruby Headed in 2021?

#360

Post by zerocount »

joelbluminator wrote: post #338
horsawlarway wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a pleasant experience to come on board and deal with a typeless, styleless, inconsistent mess. And that's what Ruby on Rails will create, unless you spend an inordinate amount of effort on adding back all the tooling you need to make functional software in large groups. Even then - there's no real path to a mature and maintainable language/framework. In my area (Atlanta) we're seeing a glut of RoR devs avail…

> a LOT of them are trying to get out and work with something else (several folks I know are moving to elixir) Dumb move, Elixir has around 1000 job openings in the U.S while Ruby has 35000. In fact I find it pretty hard to believe they can't get a Ruby job in the U.S, and they choose Elixir from all stacks as a solution to their problem. Sounds to me like they just wanna try Elixir and can't really build a good argu…

I agree. Elixir is just too obscure.
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