5 ms·

The most compelling reason not to use Ruby for a new company or product in an existing company is that the talent of the average Ruby programmer has dropped dra

The most compelling reason not to use Ruby for a new company or product in an existing company is that the talent of the average Ruby programmer has dropped drastically in recent years. Face it, Ruby is hitting that adoption stride where it's attracting/has attracted a lot of people who don't care about the quality of code they write. JavaScript isn't any better and is probably even worse in this regard. As much as we hate to admit it, a significant part about what attracts us to a language is the quality of people who use it. While Ruby has nicer things about it than Java did in 2004, the people adopting Ruby in the early to mid 2000s didn't just dislike Java, they liked the like-minded individuals who seek out tools to make their lives better.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> The most compelling reason not to use Ruby for a new company or product in an existing company is that the talent of the average Ruby programmer has dropped drastically in recent years. That's a pretty good reason if your selection method is substantially equivalent to choosing "X programmers" (for whatever X is your technology base) at random. But, beyond that, I don't see that it matters.
- rubiquity 11y ago
  A lot of companies basically hire in that way when their hiring means are through recruiters/job ads. Very few companies have the time/diligence or live in an area with enough of a developer pool to be finnicky about who they hire. Obviously there are ways (remote) to offset this but none of this addresses the fact of my initial statement.
  - ianstormtaylor 11y ago
    If your going with a don't "be finnicky about who [to] hire" hiring strategy, your company will have way bigger issues than programming framework choice, so it won't really matter.
spdionis 11y ago
Apparently ruby is going to be the next PHP?
volaski 11y ago
"a significant part about what attracts us to a language is the quality of people who use it." <= where did this theory even come from? I learned to program because I wanted to build stuff. I couldn't care less about "quality" of other people who's using a language, I only care about how productive it makes me.
- rubiquity 11y ago
  > * I learned to program because I wanted to build stuff. I couldn't care less about "quality" of other people who's using a language* You're conflating "learning to program" with "using a specific programming language."
  - volaski 11y ago
    OK then let me add "Rails" to that sentence if this makes you feel better. I learned to program Rails because I wanted to build stuff. I couldn't care less about "quality" of other people who's using it Rails was and is the most productive web development framework and that's why I use it. I don't even know who's in rails community.
- dasil003 11y ago
  In principle yes, but in practice there's a significant signal-to-noise ratio. This is why I abandoned PHP in favor of ruby—it's not that you can't build great things in PHP, it's just that you couldn't learn as much from the community without wading through tons of crap.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> The most compelling reason not to use Ruby for a new company or product in an existing company is that the talent of the average Ruby programmer has dropped drastically in recent years. That's a pretty good reason if your selection method is substantially equivalent to choosing "X programmers" (for whatever X is your technology base) at random. But, beyond that, I don't see that it matters.

rubiquity 11y ago
A lot of companies basically hire in that way when their hiring means are through recruiters/job ads. Very few companies have the time/diligence or live in an area with enough of a developer pool to be finnicky about who they hire. Obviously there are ways (remote) to offset this but none of this addresses the fact of my initial statement.
- ianstormtaylor 11y ago
  If your going with a don't "be finnicky about who [to] hire" hiring strategy, your company will have way bigger issues than programming framework choice, so it won't really matter.

spdionis 11y ago

Apparently ruby is going to be the next PHP?

volaski 11y ago

"a significant part about what attracts us to a language is the quality of people who use it." <= where did this theory even come from? I learned to program because I wanted to build stuff. I couldn't care less about "quality" of other people who's using a language, I only care about how productive it makes me.

rubiquity 11y ago
> * I learned to program because I wanted to build stuff. I couldn't care less about "quality" of other people who's using a language* You're conflating "learning to program" with "using a specific programming language."
- volaski 11y ago
  OK then let me add "Rails" to that sentence if this makes you feel better. I learned to program Rails because I wanted to build stuff. I couldn't care less about "quality" of other people who's using it Rails was and is the most productive web development framework and that's why I use it. I don't even know who's in rails community.
dasil003 11y ago
In principle yes, but in practice there's a significant signal-to-noise ratio. This is why I abandoned PHP in favor of ruby—it's not that you can't build great things in PHP, it's just that you couldn't learn as much from the community without wading through tons of crap.