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I'm a Rubyist and don't know much Clojure, but that sounds pretty reasonable. I'm not sure if Ruby would have taken off if it wasn't for Rails. AFAIK, Rails pus

by ufmace 9y ago

I'm a Rubyist and don't know much Clojure, but that sounds pretty reasonable. I'm not sure if Ruby would have taken off if it wasn't for Rails. AFAIK, Rails pushed forward a lot of new ideas in web development and really brought Ruby into the mainstream. Going by that comparison, I would think it'd be hard for Clojure to really catch on without a revolutionary framework that you need it to work with, which may be tough to pull off considering that it's all on the JVM.

mirekrusin 9y ago
Rails was definitely responsible for Ruby going mainstream, without it, it would slide below Python. More than that: I think that combination of TextMate and Rails brought a huge number of web devs from Windows to MacOS as well. I remember around maybe 2005/6 people were switching from Intel based Windows to, at that time, PowerPC based Macs (transition to Intel was about to happen) just to use TextMate and Rails - image how huge change it was for developers - and they did it and liked it. Good times.
- juliend2 9y ago
  I was one of them. I was doing some web design/frontend at that time (2005-2006), and the whole Ruby on Rails movement seemed so different, easy to learn, and yet quite productive. And you could develop on a Mac (!!!. Windows XP was my OS at that time). All the rails screencasts I saw featured TextMate, on a Mac. And so the first ActionScript gig I did was to pay for my shiny new Mac Mini. Looking back to it, it seems like a stupid cargo cult effect, but Rails is the main reason I switched to the Mac since then.
  - faitswulff 9y ago
    Ditto, thanks to my first job, and I don't regret it, either. Despite recent software hitches, Mac OS has been far and away a superior experience for development than when I was trying to run RailsInstaller on my Windows machine.
- pmontra 9y ago
  It has always been a pain to develop with Ruby on Windows, especially if targeting a Linux server. Gems that don't build on Windows, little help because almost everbody is on a Mac, Linux or a Linux VM on Windows. I knew many people that switched to a Mac because of that. They didn't want to manage a Linux desktop, which was more painful to do than today and with some glitches even today. I switched to Ubuntu instead and I'm still there. Emacs instead of TextMate, which was really big at the time.
  - ufmace 9y ago
    That's pretty much how I've found it. Ruby works fine on Windows, until you hit a gem version that doesn't build. It usually works all right if you can stay a few Ruby versions behind and carefully pick the gems you use, but it'll likely fall apart if you try to collaborate with anyone using Mac or Linux, updating to the latest Ruby and gems and grabbing any gem they feel like. Although now, there's WSL on Windows 10. Ruby works great on that for me, every version, every gem. It's kinda like the equivalent of Wine, so it just sits there and doesn't hog resources like a VM.
- bluedino 9y ago
  I know for me the combination of RoR and the MacBook Pro caused me to never look back

by ufmace 9y ago

mirekrusin 9y ago

Rails was definitely responsible for Ruby going mainstream, without it, it would slide below Python. More than that: I think that combination of TextMate and Rails brought a huge number of web devs from Windows to MacOS as well. I remember around maybe 2005/6 people were switching from Intel based Windows to, at that time, PowerPC based Macs (transition to Intel was about to happen) just to use TextMate and Rails - image how huge change it was for developers - and they did it and liked it. Good times.

juliend2 9y ago
I was one of them. I was doing some web design/frontend at that time (2005-2006), and the whole Ruby on Rails movement seemed so different, easy to learn, and yet quite productive. And you could develop on a Mac (!!!. Windows XP was my OS at that time). All the rails screencasts I saw featured TextMate, on a Mac. And so the first ActionScript gig I did was to pay for my shiny new Mac Mini. Looking back to it, it seems like a stupid cargo cult effect, but Rails is the main reason I switched to the Mac since then.
- faitswulff 9y ago
  Ditto, thanks to my first job, and I don't regret it, either. Despite recent software hitches, Mac OS has been far and away a superior experience for development than when I was trying to run RailsInstaller on my Windows machine.
pmontra 9y ago
It has always been a pain to develop with Ruby on Windows, especially if targeting a Linux server. Gems that don't build on Windows, little help because almost everbody is on a Mac, Linux or a Linux VM on Windows. I knew many people that switched to a Mac because of that. They didn't want to manage a Linux desktop, which was more painful to do than today and with some glitches even today. I switched to Ubuntu instead and I'm still there. Emacs instead of TextMate, which was really big at the time.
- ufmace 9y ago
  That's pretty much how I've found it. Ruby works fine on Windows, until you hit a gem version that doesn't build. It usually works all right if you can stay a few Ruby versions behind and carefully pick the gems you use, but it'll likely fall apart if you try to collaborate with anyone using Mac or Linux, updating to the latest Ruby and gems and grabbing any gem they feel like. Although now, there's WSL on Windows 10. Ruby works great on that for me, every version, every gem. It's kinda like the equivalent of Wine, so it just sits there and doesn't hog resources like a VM.
bluedino 9y ago
I know for me the combination of RoR and the MacBook Pro caused me to never look back