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Incidentally, this theory predicts that all the new(ish) programming languages attracting buzz these days — whether Ruby, or Scala, or Clojure, or Go, or whatev

by mcantor 16y ago

Incidentally, this theory predicts that all the new(ish) programming languages attracting buzz these days — whether Ruby, or Scala, or Clojure, or Go, or whatever — will fail to attract large numbers of programmers. I'm a little confused. Hasn't Ruby already passed this test, or am I just biased because I enjoy writing in Ruby? I was under the impression that Ruby and Python were largely equivalent in popularity and notoriety, as evidenced by Rails and Django, for example.

dragonquest 16y ago
I do agree that Ruby has passed this test since there are quite a few Ruby projects out there, a ton of startups and even some big names showing interest in it. There are webhosts out there which specialize in Ruby deployments which is a big win if you see Ruby as a web language. However, I would disagree on the comparison with Python which has a much larger community base than Ruby. Rails may be more popular than Django but Python has even penetrated desktop apps like Hg, Bazaar, Meld etc. which is one area Ruby is still to affect significantly. But having said that, Scala, Clojure and especially Go are not nearly as popular as Ruby or Python.
runevault 16y ago
I'm not a ruby fan, but anyone who says it hasn't attracted a large number of programmers is either insane or delusional. I don't think it's passed python yet but it's still REALLY popular.
kscaldef 16y ago
I would tend to agree, and I would also add that I'm pretty sure there's significantly more PHP programmers and jobs than either of Ruby or Python. Singling out Python as the article does seems a little bizarre to me.
dagw 16y ago
Looking at it from a purely web perspective then Ruby and Python look quite equal with RoR probably even having and edge. However Python is used just about everywhere; finance, GIS, visualization, statistical and numerical analysis, data mining and so on and so forth. In fact I don't think I've seen a major company in any field that doesn't use Python somewhere in its organization. Conversely I don't think I've seen any company use ruby for anything other than web stuff.
zokier 16y ago
TIOBE index places Ruby at 12th position and Python at 7th.

by mcantor 16y ago

dragonquest 16y ago

I do agree that Ruby has passed this test since there are quite a few Ruby projects out there, a ton of startups and even some big names showing interest in it. There are webhosts out there which specialize in Ruby deployments which is a big win if you see Ruby as a web language. However, I would disagree on the comparison with Python which has a much larger community base than Ruby. Rails may be more popular than Django but Python has even penetrated desktop apps like Hg, Bazaar, Meld etc. which is one area Ruby is still to affect significantly. But having said that, Scala, Clojure and especially Go are not nearly as popular as Ruby or Python.

runevault 16y ago

I'm not a ruby fan, but anyone who says it hasn't attracted a large number of programmers is either insane or delusional. I don't think it's passed python yet but it's still REALLY popular.

kscaldef 16y ago

I would tend to agree, and I would also add that I'm pretty sure there's significantly more PHP programmers and jobs than either of Ruby or Python. Singling out Python as the article does seems a little bizarre to me.

dagw 16y ago

Looking at it from a purely web perspective then Ruby and Python look quite equal with RoR probably even having and edge. However Python is used just about everywhere; finance, GIS, visualization, statistical and numerical analysis, data mining and so on and so forth. In fact I don't think I've seen a major company in any field that doesn't use Python somewhere in its organization. Conversely I don't think I've seen any company use ruby for anything other than web stuff.

zokier 16y ago

TIOBE index places Ruby at 12th position and Python at 7th.