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I think this is more or less accurate. Sad to see RoR to be declining.

christophilus 9y ago
I'm not a Ruby/Rails fan at all, but I work at a Rails shop. It would be interesting to know why the decline is happening, and what alternatives are replacing it. I suspect Elixir and Go.
- aczerepinski 9y ago
  Perhaps - I write mostly Go and a little Elixir at a shop that still identifies as Rails first. On the other hand, the recruiter spam I get gives me the impression that JavaScript is the main thing taking mindshare away from Rails. Both because Node is popular and because there are now a lot of front end monoliths.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Bear in mind that this is about Stack Overflow attention. It's quite possible that there's now sufficient documentation and experience in the Rails community that there's just less requirement for interaction with Stack Overflow! It also seems likely that newer developers are going to be steered towards other solutions for web development.
  - beobab 9y ago
    If newer developers are steered elsewhere, then you have an aging population problem, which historically leads to decline.
    - holydude 9y ago
      Well we have discussed this in other threads already :-). That's the problem with Ruby in general that you can only solve certain problems with it. Beyond Rails,devops and some obscure embedded stuff they do in Japan there is not much that you can do with Ruby.
      - shandor 9y ago
        Embedded stuff in Ruby? Now that's a story I want to hear. Any pointers?
        holydude 9y ago
        Honestly I do not know. There was an article not long time ago mentioning that Ruby is not popular in Japan because of Rails but because it is used in a lot of places like embedded stuff etc. http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2017/5/24/how-is-ruby-different-in-japan http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2017/5/...
        shandor 9y ago
        Thanks, that was really interesting. Guess I'll have to go and read on mruby now!
      - AznHisoka 9y ago
        That is like saying "Beyond making a front end and the obscure backend stuff" there is not much you can do with Javascript
- maze-le 9y ago
  The SO-traffic on Elixir is still very low, compared to ruby-on-rails or django. [0]: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=django%2Celixir%2Cruby-on-rails https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=django%2Celix...
- bmon 9y ago
  I also work at a rails shop, but I'm a Django dev hired for a legacy project. rails has been much harder to pick up than other frameworks for me. I think my biggest difficulty has been figuring out how parts of the code connect/work together, by mechanisms like filename. Python is much more verbose in contrast. I wonder if other people have the same experience.
- oelmekki 9y ago
  I've been a ruby dev since way before rails, when it was considered "the language to build RPGs" (because of RPGMaker). Go is definitely the language I use the most, those days (go for the backend, react for the frontend). I still often use rails, though, it's not a pure replacement (I'll use rails when I want to quickly test an idea that does not require big frontend dev). I also regularly work for a company that was full rails, and is now migrating away. In their case, they're going with nodejs (they have many developers, big turn over, and all devs seem to know javascript). Of course, that's just two experiences :)
  - holydude 9y ago
    Yeah for me JS is the new Java :-). How is react experience couple with Go for you ?
    - oelmekki 9y ago
      > How is react experience couple with Go for you ? It just makes sense. Which is funny, because I got in both of them in a separate way. I didn't use angular because I didn't want to replace rails router with angular one. React allowed me to let it take control of just a part of the page, which was cool. My react components got bigger and bigger from there. I first started go because I wanted to parallelize huge background jobs. Then I started writing dev tools with it. Then small APIs. At one point, I realized that my main objection about SPAs (I say "webclients", nowadays), which was that they could not be properly indexed by search engines, was irrelevant : all apps I wrote where behind auth, and landing pages didn't need a framework, static pages were perfectly good enough. So I started using react-router, and it made a lot of sense to use go : adding a few endpoints was small a task enough, and then I could write background jobs by just prefixing method calls with `go`, not needing complex process management (I still use queues, because I don't want to discard a job when I deploy and restart app). The biggest challenge with go has been to "think simple", which is quite a shock when you thought it was already what you were doing with ruby. Initially, I used custom types a lot, and embedded types, and interfaces. And then I realized I was doing OOP all over again - and as with OOP, I didn't know where the methods I called were coming from (since then, I adopted a more FP-like style). The biggest challenge with react has clearly been flux and redux. I started with big root components containing all business logic and passing callbacks around, which became a problem when frontend apps started to get big. So I tried flux and redux, but... They just introduce a lot of concepts and rigid structure that I felt were too much. So I just wrote my own flux lib, trying to keep it as conceptually simple as possible. I still write redux apps from time to time, because it's good for big teams and I have to be fluent with it to work with them. But this was worth it. Today, I feel like rails is becoming what we initially were boo-ing java for : a lot of overcomplicated architectures that solve no real problems. It's not even rails fault, it's rails users fault. I know when I work on a rails project with other people that it will be overcomplicated (so, the controller is calling a service object which calls five other ones which call decorators calling models and then passing them to adapters which call serializers...). Rails itself tends to go that path too, since it's what their users are asking for (actioncable? No way. And I'm a big fan of websockets, so I'm sad to say that). With go, I get that feeling we had with early ruby and early rails : just get the job done. Of course, I don't expect that to last :)
- mcphage 9y ago
  > what alternatives are replacing it Node.js, and front end JS frameworks.
- myth_drannon 9y ago
  There was a recent discussion on it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14897457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14897457
avremel 9y ago
Even if rails is declining overall, it is still one of the frendliest beginner frameworks out there. If it lives on in practically every bootcamp curriculum as the go to framework which can be taught in 3 weeks flat, why will it be replaced? Or is that not enough to ensure the ecosystem stays afloat?

I'm not a Ruby/Rails fan at all, but I work at a Rails shop. It would be interesting to know why the decline is happening, and what alternatives are replacing it. I suspect Elixir and Go.

aczerepinski 9y ago
Perhaps - I write mostly Go and a little Elixir at a shop that still identifies as Rails first. On the other hand, the recruiter spam I get gives me the impression that JavaScript is the main thing taking mindshare away from Rails. Both because Node is popular and because there are now a lot of front end monoliths.
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Bear in mind that this is about Stack Overflow attention. It's quite possible that there's now sufficient documentation and experience in the Rails community that there's just less requirement for interaction with Stack Overflow! It also seems likely that newer developers are going to be steered towards other solutions for web development.
- beobab 9y ago
  If newer developers are steered elsewhere, then you have an aging population problem, which historically leads to decline.
  - holydude 9y ago
    Well we have discussed this in other threads already :-). That's the problem with Ruby in general that you can only solve certain problems with it. Beyond Rails,devops and some obscure embedded stuff they do in Japan there is not much that you can do with Ruby.
    - shandor 9y ago
      Embedded stuff in Ruby? Now that's a story I want to hear. Any pointers?
      - holydude 9y ago
        Honestly I do not know. There was an article not long time ago mentioning that Ruby is not popular in Japan because of Rails but because it is used in a lot of places like embedded stuff etc. http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2017/5/24/how-is-ruby-different-in-japan http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2017/5/...
        shandor 9y ago
        Thanks, that was really interesting. Guess I'll have to go and read on mruby now!
    - AznHisoka 9y ago
      That is like saying "Beyond making a front end and the obscure backend stuff" there is not much you can do with Javascript
maze-le 9y ago
The SO-traffic on Elixir is still very low, compared to ruby-on-rails or django. [0]: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=django%2Celixir%2Cruby-on-rails https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=django%2Celix...
bmon 9y ago
I also work at a rails shop, but I'm a Django dev hired for a legacy project. rails has been much harder to pick up than other frameworks for me. I think my biggest difficulty has been figuring out how parts of the code connect/work together, by mechanisms like filename. Python is much more verbose in contrast. I wonder if other people have the same experience.
oelmekki 9y ago
I've been a ruby dev since way before rails, when it was considered "the language to build RPGs" (because of RPGMaker). Go is definitely the language I use the most, those days (go for the backend, react for the frontend). I still often use rails, though, it's not a pure replacement (I'll use rails when I want to quickly test an idea that does not require big frontend dev). I also regularly work for a company that was full rails, and is now migrating away. In their case, they're going with nodejs (they have many developers, big turn over, and all devs seem to know javascript). Of course, that's just two experiences :)
- holydude 9y ago
  Yeah for me JS is the new Java :-). How is react experience couple with Go for you ?
  - oelmekki 9y ago
    > How is react experience couple with Go for you ? It just makes sense. Which is funny, because I got in both of them in a separate way. I didn't use angular because I didn't want to replace rails router with angular one. React allowed me to let it take control of just a part of the page, which was cool. My react components got bigger and bigger from there. I first started go because I wanted to parallelize huge background jobs. Then I started writing dev tools with it. Then small APIs. At one point, I realized that my main objection about SPAs (I say "webclients", nowadays), which was that they could not be properly indexed by search engines, was irrelevant : all apps I wrote where behind auth, and landing pages didn't need a framework, static pages were perfectly good enough. So I started using react-router, and it made a lot of sense to use go : adding a few endpoints was small a task enough, and then I could write background jobs by just prefixing method calls with `go`, not needing complex process management (I still use queues, because I don't want to discard a job when I deploy and restart app). The biggest challenge with go has been to "think simple", which is quite a shock when you thought it was already what you were doing with ruby. Initially, I used custom types a lot, and embedded types, and interfaces. And then I realized I was doing OOP all over again - and as with OOP, I didn't know where the methods I called were coming from (since then, I adopted a more FP-like style). The biggest challenge with react has clearly been flux and redux. I started with big root components containing all business logic and passing callbacks around, which became a problem when frontend apps started to get big. So I tried flux and redux, but... They just introduce a lot of concepts and rigid structure that I felt were too much. So I just wrote my own flux lib, trying to keep it as conceptually simple as possible. I still write redux apps from time to time, because it's good for big teams and I have to be fluent with it to work with them. But this was worth it. Today, I feel like rails is becoming what we initially were boo-ing java for : a lot of overcomplicated architectures that solve no real problems. It's not even rails fault, it's rails users fault. I know when I work on a rails project with other people that it will be overcomplicated (so, the controller is calling a service object which calls five other ones which call decorators calling models and then passing them to adapters which call serializers...). Rails itself tends to go that path too, since it's what their users are asking for (actioncable? No way. And I'm a big fan of websockets, so I'm sad to say that). With go, I get that feeling we had with early ruby and early rails : just get the job done. Of course, I don't expect that to last :)
mcphage 9y ago
> what alternatives are replacing it Node.js, and front end JS frameworks.
myth_drannon 9y ago
There was a recent discussion on it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14897457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14897457

avremel 9y ago

Even if rails is declining overall, it is still one of the frendliest beginner frameworks out there. If it lives on in practically every bootcamp curriculum as the go to framework which can be taught in 3 weeks flat, why will it be replaced? Or is that not enough to ensure the ecosystem stays afloat?