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> Ruby is already not a super-popular language is this opinion or fact? > I also (personally) disagree with lots of the philosophy behind Rails. You present

> Ruby is already not a super-popular language is this opinion or fact? > I also (personally) disagree with lots of the philosophy behind Rails. You present this as reasoning but, doesn't make it wrong.

smt88 11y ago
There's currently no such thing as "fact" when it comes to language popularity. Even if we had perfect metrics (how much do people like a language? how much do they use it?) there's no set definition for "popular". My shorthand statement meant that I've never seen Ruby in the top 5 (rarely even in the top 10) languages. http://langpop.com/ http://langpop.com/ http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... Those rankings aren't perfect obviously. My personal experience backs it up: Ruby/Rails is often the framework startups use to build MVPs, but I know a lot of companies that then switched languages (or sometimes switched to other Ruby frameworks).
- meesterdude 11y ago
  Rails is a popular choice for startups because it's fast to get you going. but I work on many projects that have been around since 2.x or even 1.x and they still use rails, and there is absolutely no reason to switch to anything else. By and large, most organizations that start out on rails have little reason to switch to something else, because rails can get you very very far. Can you scale it to twitter level without making changes? probably not. But most don't ever come close to twitter scale, and those that do couldn't have gotten there without rails in the first place.
  - smt88 11y ago
    It's not always about performance/scale. Often, it's about being able to find engineers to work on it. I don't like working with Java personally, but it's much easier to staff a Java project than a Ruby one. A good measure of how useful a framework is for business is this: how long does it take a programmer with no familiarity with the framework to pick it up? Meaning someone with programming experience, but nothing specific to this code? That has nothing to do with how the code performs and everything to do with how well the code is organized and whether it does "surprising" things.
    - meesterdude 11y ago
      there is not a shortage of ruby engineers, nor of jobs to be filled for them. Also, rails is easy to pick up. It's continuously groomed and improved. Ruby itself is lends itself to expression. It's also a very well organized codebase. It's been around for 10 years. People have been saying it won't last, that it'll never gain traction, but that's nonsense. It's a tool out there that you can use, and I as well as many other people enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that. It's a choice, an opinion. And you can get a job working with it if you want. you don't HAVE to use it, if you don't want to. if you want to use java, go right ahead. I could never, and will never. But at the end of the day, i love the web, and I love ruby, and I'm grateful I get to do both at the same time, and if the OP wants to as well, they can. There is no reason to not learn rails if it's something your interested in and are considering it as a career possibility.
zippy786 11y ago
> You present this as reasoning but, doesn't make it wrong. In essence you are trying to say Rails philosophy is right and the other one is wrong ? This is exactly what's wrong with Rails too much opinionated that it makes me want to puke for it is promoting pseudo-science. Give us fact about any of the philosophy Rails uses, I remember, making too many SQL queries is "just fine".
- meesterdude 11y ago
  The world is not black & white. Rails is good and works, but there are other frameworks out there too that can generate a webpage. None are "wrong".

smt88 11y ago

There's currently no such thing as "fact" when it comes to language popularity. Even if we had perfect metrics (how much do people like a language? how much do they use it?) there's no set definition for "popular". My shorthand statement meant that I've never seen Ruby in the top 5 (rarely even in the top 10) languages. http://langpop.com/ http://langpop.com/ http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... Those rankings aren't perfect obviously. My personal experience backs it up: Ruby/Rails is often the framework startups use to build MVPs, but I know a lot of companies that then switched languages (or sometimes switched to other Ruby frameworks).

meesterdude 11y ago
Rails is a popular choice for startups because it's fast to get you going. but I work on many projects that have been around since 2.x or even 1.x and they still use rails, and there is absolutely no reason to switch to anything else. By and large, most organizations that start out on rails have little reason to switch to something else, because rails can get you very very far. Can you scale it to twitter level without making changes? probably not. But most don't ever come close to twitter scale, and those that do couldn't have gotten there without rails in the first place.
- smt88 11y ago
  It's not always about performance/scale. Often, it's about being able to find engineers to work on it. I don't like working with Java personally, but it's much easier to staff a Java project than a Ruby one. A good measure of how useful a framework is for business is this: how long does it take a programmer with no familiarity with the framework to pick it up? Meaning someone with programming experience, but nothing specific to this code? That has nothing to do with how the code performs and everything to do with how well the code is organized and whether it does "surprising" things.
  - meesterdude 11y ago
    there is not a shortage of ruby engineers, nor of jobs to be filled for them. Also, rails is easy to pick up. It's continuously groomed and improved. Ruby itself is lends itself to expression. It's also a very well organized codebase. It's been around for 10 years. People have been saying it won't last, that it'll never gain traction, but that's nonsense. It's a tool out there that you can use, and I as well as many other people enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that. It's a choice, an opinion. And you can get a job working with it if you want. you don't HAVE to use it, if you don't want to. if you want to use java, go right ahead. I could never, and will never. But at the end of the day, i love the web, and I love ruby, and I'm grateful I get to do both at the same time, and if the OP wants to as well, they can. There is no reason to not learn rails if it's something your interested in and are considering it as a career possibility.

zippy786 11y ago

> You present this as reasoning but, doesn't make it wrong. In essence you are trying to say Rails philosophy is right and the other one is wrong ? This is exactly what's wrong with Rails too much opinionated that it makes me want to puke for it is promoting pseudo-science. Give us fact about any of the philosophy Rails uses, I remember, making too many SQL queries is "just fine".

meesterdude 11y ago
The world is not black & white. Rails is good and works, but there are other frameworks out there too that can generate a webpage. None are "wrong".