It seems to me like a hybrid of python with perl. It does a ton of things and from what I've heard, it's slow as molasses because of all of the metaprogramming syntax that's built in. RubyMotion allows you to build iOS apps in Ruby. It doesn't seem like other languages get the attention that ruby does. It feels like a scripting language but gets the attention of a compiled one, I don't get it. Is it becoming the first programming language that some people learn? It's actually about the only language I don't know (and I know x86 asm, C, PHP, ObjC++, Python, Perl, C#, you name it.) Thanks in advance.
Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
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Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#2I personally love the syntax, and in my own experience is not that slow, I use it with Sinatra and my productivity is huge.
I'm also a C# and Delphi developer. I learned Ruby cause I had the need the learn an scripting language, and the reason to not learn python was that it looks like it is stock for ever in the 2.7 version, so I chose Ruby and I'm very pleased with my decision.
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#3I learned Ruby because of Rails.
If I need a scripting language, I prefer Ruby because I know it the best now. I'm pretty good at Python, but feel more comfortable in Ruby because I use it more often.
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#4Ruby is popular because of Rails. If you're not going to use Rails, I don't see much reason to learn Ruby as in my opinion Python is easier to learn and is applicable to so much more than Ruby.
That said, I agree that the syntax did feel like a hybrid of Python and Perl (with a bit of crack mixed in) - but once I started playing around with it, I really started to appreciate the syntax.
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#5I'm interested in the answers to these questions:
1. What does Rails do that Django doesn't? (Feel free to substitute any other Web framework for Django if you think it'll help your answer be more illustrative.)
2. Why hasn't the Python community seen whatever Ruby's doing and copied whatever makes Ruby popular? Are there any Python/Ruby experts reading this who are willing to port or reimplement the good parts of Ruby in Python?
3. Are there any other reasons to prefer Ruby over Python besides Rails? For example, do Gems do things that are impossible with Pip?
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#6I personally love the syntax, and in my own experience is not that slow, I use it with Sinatra and my productivity is huge. I'm also a C# and Delphi developer. I learned Ruby cause I had the need the learn an scripting language, and the reason to not learn python was that it looks like it is stock for ever in the 2.7 version, so I chose Ruby and I'm very pleased with my decision.
It's interesting that the two responses on here (yours included) so far mention that it was learned for scripting. The main reason I made the initial post is because I see it being used for much more than just scripting, ie. rails and ruby motion. It seems somewhat naive to use a scripting language in leui of a real language when coding something industrial. So I still am at a loss... Thank you for your comment, yeah it does seem a lot more powerful than Python. I am not a fan of python's requirement of object methods requiring the self arg, dastardly!
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#7When I gave up on perl, I considered other scripting languages and it turned out that ruby was the best match for my programming style. I think ruby users and ruby on rails give it a bad name, though :)
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#8I personally love the syntax, and in my own experience is not that slow, I use it with Sinatra and my productivity is huge. I'm also a C# and Delphi developer. I learned Ruby cause I had the need the learn an scripting language, and the reason to not learn python was that it looks like it is stock for ever in the 2.7 version, so I chose Ruby and I'm very pleased with my decision.
It's interesting that the two responses on here (yours included) so far mention that it was learned for scripting. The main reason I made the initial post is because I see it being used for much more than just scripting, ie. rails and ruby motion. It seems somewhat naive to use a scripting language in leui of a real language when coding something industrial. So I still am at a loss... Thank you for your comment, yeah…
Scripting languages are "real" languages. Also, RubyMotion projects are compiled down to machine code, not interpreted.
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#9I love Ruby's syntax. I tries Python, but I didn't like it as much as Ruby, what putt me off about python is the meaningful indentation (although I do not mind that in CoffeeScript). Also, Ruby itself is not slow, but CRuby (MRI, YARV, whatever you call it) is slow; Rubinius ("rbx") is a wonderful (and my personal favourite) alternative for MRI. In fact, I use rbx and EventMachine for a fun app that has a growing number of users! However, when I found some things were too slow in Ruby I just wrote a C extension (yes, yes, I know it's a bit of a controversy).
As to why I learnt it: it looked fun, and I was right, Ruby brings me pleasure!
Re: Can anyone explain why Ruby is so popular?
#10I'm interested in the answers to these questions: 1. What does Rails do that Django doesn't? (Feel free to substitute any other Web framework for Django if you think it'll help your answer be more illustrative.) 2. Why hasn't the Python community seen whatever Ruby's doing and copied whatever makes Ruby popular? Are there any Python/Ruby experts reading this who are willing to port or reimplement the good parts of Ru…
I don't know about the first question, but:
2) Because Python would become Ruby, or at least Pubython, then. What attracts most people to Ruby is its humanist syntax, not sure what Pythons guiding philosophy behind the syntax is, but I tried both and ruby was just a lot better.
3) There is loads of little things that are just personal preference for me, but the choice of language always boils down to personal preference one way or the other! Never really tried Pip, so I can't answer.