5 ms·

He's more beginner then you. Calling ruby the one true language after it's been losing traction for years indicates to me he probably just started.

vinceguidry 8y ago
I've been coding since I was 9 years old, made my first web page at 15, I'm 34 now, having been a pro web dev for 5 years. I'm no greybeard, but I'm definitely not a beginner. And I stand by my assertion. Programming languages come and go. I've been watching it happen for over a decade. Ruby's the one language that transcends the normal reasons why they do that. Other languages fit hardware or chosen domains better or worse, those are the reasons why you'd choose one or the other. Ruby's the only language that fits the mind better.
- CrystalLangUser 8y ago
  Good thing Crystal based its syntax off of Ruby then. And it's statically typed, thank god. I do professional work in Ruby currently, but Crystal is just so much more pleasant to work with.
- hota_mazi 8y ago
  But surely you see that Ruby has been on a steady decline for ten years, and with RoR falling out of grace, that decline is accelerating.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    For me the last decade has been one of seeing steadily increasing demand for my Ruby skills, and I don't do Rails at all. So if Ruby is "on a steady decline" someone forgot to tell my customers and employers.
    - crimsonalucard 8y ago
      You live in a bubble. Look up some numbers. From an empirical standpoint ruby is dying. Of course your anecdotal experience trumps all the numbers so my point is invalid.
      - vidarh 8y ago
        I've seen plenty of numbers, and I see it being talked about less some places, more others. I don't see any evidence that it is dying. I see evidence there's less hype surrounding Rails, which is great, as I don't like Rails. In any case it is irrelevant, as what matters to my use of Ruby is that my "bubble" keeps expanding and paying more, and producing more software that I benefit from. If it's "dying" outside of that, then that's not a problem. This idea of languages "dying" to me indicates bubbles of your own - if there's one thing we've seen over most of the history of software it is that programming languages have remained incredibly persistent for decades even after they stop being used in new development, and we're certainly nowhere near that point for Ruby.
    - hota_mazi 8y ago
      Your personal experience doesn't invalidate the claim that Ruby is declining. COBOL programmers are in hot demand because there are so few left that even the few positions where they are needed outnumbers them. Look at objective numbers on language popularity, job boards, etc... You'll see that Ruby has pretty much vanished.
      - vidarh 8y ago
        I've never once seen "objective numbers on language popularity".
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    People have been saying that about Ruby for years, but what I look for is whether Ruby stops solving problems better than other languages do. My own shop has recently made the decision to replatform onto Node, for no real reason that I can discover. Just seemed to be a "oh let's all go learn the new hotness over here and toss away our existing architecture in order to do it. When something I wanted I found out was unmaintained in Ruby, I almost went along whole-heartedly with this new direction. But I've found something even more fundamental that's unmaintained in Node that's got me back in the "just use Ruby, it works and I know it really well" camp. Faddish behavior on the parts of developers doesn't really concern me. I was never concerned that all my RDBMS knowledge would get tossed into the shitter when Mongo hit the scene. A steady decline doesn't bother me. COBOL has been declining for 30 years, and you can still make a fine living supporting COBOL codebases. No, devs can do whatever they want, there's always going to be that pragmatic group of engineers that will use Ruby because it's still the best at what it does.
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  That's how I feel about Python. It also feels like it has a unique mental ergonomics. We're both super biased in that regard; everyone has a language they prefer to think in. Usually a dynamic, malleable one. Who thought perl would die? That said, I'm going to agree with sibling comments and give Python one big, big, advantage over Ruby: it's made inroads into a ton more domains such as numerical computing, duct tape programming, bioinformatics, ml/ai etc. It's installed by default in nearly every *nix flavor, mac OS included.
  - vgy7ujm 8y ago
    Perl is no more dead than Ruby at least.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Ruby's the only language that fits the mind better. Look, I really like Ruby, too, but the idea that it is the one language that “fits the mind better” and is, for that reason, immune to the normal ebb and flow of language popularity is both amazingly parochial in the first case and empirically false in the last case.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    What brought me to that conclusion was my rejection of Scheme. I learned Scheme first, through HtDP, which absolutely blew my mind. I wanted to use Scheme for everything, but instead made the pragmatic choice to learn Ruby so that I could more easily find a job, and just use HtDP concepts in my Ruby programs. Well after awhile I realized I didn't miss Scheme. Like, at all. I had to really think hard about why. The first insight I had was that, well, syntax really does matter, and the paren-soup just isn't aesthetic. The second thing I realized was that Ruby's object model is just far more intuitive than any other way of dealing with objects. It's just, well, elegant. Everything's an object, everything has a class. This is what Crystal misses. And it can't because of its static nature, types can't be a class. A certain kind of reflection is impossible. And this is where static vs. dynamic comes in. Static forces you to write boilerplate. Dynamic lets you write it when you need it. You want dynamic until you want static. It's just that simple. No one is inherently better, they're just better suited to different situations. You want to flow from one to the other, not get handcuffed. This makes dynamic inherently better, because you can build a static type checker on top of a dynamic language, but to put dynamic typing inside a static language is just always going to be a kludge. If I can get pleasing syntax, an elegant object model, and gradual typing in a language that's also faster than Ruby, I'd jump on it. But every other language makes compromises on these points for one reason or another. Of all three, it seems the object model is the most difficult to implement, but it's one I rely on to get me out of jams. I don't often need metaprogramming, but when I do, it saves me a lot of time. And I've never run into anything else like it save in the Lisps. If I didn't have Ruby, I'd be using a Lisp. Having metaprogramming available, even if you're not using it, gives a real sense of safety, not against silly bugs, but against the much bigger possibility, of making poor abstractions. In Ruby, once I've realized I've made a bad abstraction, I can take the working code and metaprogram it, keeping behavior working, until it's using the semantics I need from it. This makes me far more confident to just knock up systems as quickly as possible, safe in the understanding that I can turn any semantics into any other semantics when I need to. You can fix the propensity to make type errors in a dynamic language with discipline, but you can't fix the propensity to make wrong abstractions with any amount or kind of discipline that I've ever been able to see. But I'm also surprised just how much syntax impacts my desire to actually write code. There's something about Ruby's code block delimiters that are more pleasing than either whitespace or bracket delimiters. I don't mind bracket delimiters if the whole block is on one line. But to force me to use brackets for multi-line code blocks, the so-called C syntax, well I don't find it half as aesthetically pleasing as Ruby. Is it just personal preference? Perhaps. But I think a hundred years is going to really clarify everything and languages will lose their utility advantages over each other and so all that's left will be aesthetics. And I think Ruby just has everybody beat in this area.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  You are a beginner. Ruby is a dying language that hit it's high point and died and now is at it's at a low point and not going anywhere. It's time has passed like php and now it's used mostly for devops scripting as the technical debt the language accumulates is generally too high even for web apps. Python, C++, C, Java and javascript are the languages with staying power that came and never went. If you were in the industry that long you'd know that most of the languages I mentioned have serious issues and problems and that the languages staying power has nothing to do with how they fit the "mind" or how good they are. If you weren't a beginner you'd also note that ruby, like python and like javascript has serious issues when it comes to writing long lasting, reliable code. To code something as reliable and complex as an operating system in ruby would lead to huge amounts of technical debt. As a ruby or python code base grows in complexity it becomes more and more unmaintainable... It would be a mistake to write super complex systems in python or ruby because such systems benefit highly from type checking. Your comments indicate to me that it doesn't matter how long you've been programming... you lack the experience to understand this concept. Ruby is better for scripting then it is for writing applications. What I have learned over the years is that programming is more about combatting our own faulty human nature, our own propensity to make mistakes. Ironically, the more expressive a language is, the more it gives, us the opportunity to express this fault. Power comes from restriction. Type checking is one such restriction.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    You are offering up your lived experience as wisdom without any rationale as to why I should accept your conclusions over my own. Just an endless cavalcade of "you are a beginner and you lack experience." As such it's falling on deaf ears.
    - crimsonalucard 8y ago
      I don't have the time to explain the logic behind my wisdom. I can only show you the door as my conclusions are avenues you obviously haven't explored. It's up to you whether you want to take the blue pill or the red pill.

vinceguidry 8y ago

I've been coding since I was 9 years old, made my first web page at 15, I'm 34 now, having been a pro web dev for 5 years. I'm no greybeard, but I'm definitely not a beginner. And I stand by my assertion. Programming languages come and go. I've been watching it happen for over a decade. Ruby's the one language that transcends the normal reasons why they do that. Other languages fit hardware or chosen domains better or worse, those are the reasons why you'd choose one or the other. Ruby's the only language that fits the mind better.

CrystalLangUser 8y ago
Good thing Crystal based its syntax off of Ruby then. And it's statically typed, thank god. I do professional work in Ruby currently, but Crystal is just so much more pleasant to work with.
hota_mazi 8y ago
But surely you see that Ruby has been on a steady decline for ten years, and with RoR falling out of grace, that decline is accelerating.
- vidarh 8y ago
  For me the last decade has been one of seeing steadily increasing demand for my Ruby skills, and I don't do Rails at all. So if Ruby is "on a steady decline" someone forgot to tell my customers and employers.
  - crimsonalucard 8y ago
    You live in a bubble. Look up some numbers. From an empirical standpoint ruby is dying. Of course your anecdotal experience trumps all the numbers so my point is invalid.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      I've seen plenty of numbers, and I see it being talked about less some places, more others. I don't see any evidence that it is dying. I see evidence there's less hype surrounding Rails, which is great, as I don't like Rails. In any case it is irrelevant, as what matters to my use of Ruby is that my "bubble" keeps expanding and paying more, and producing more software that I benefit from. If it's "dying" outside of that, then that's not a problem. This idea of languages "dying" to me indicates bubbles of your own - if there's one thing we've seen over most of the history of software it is that programming languages have remained incredibly persistent for decades even after they stop being used in new development, and we're certainly nowhere near that point for Ruby.
  - hota_mazi 8y ago
    Your personal experience doesn't invalidate the claim that Ruby is declining. COBOL programmers are in hot demand because there are so few left that even the few positions where they are needed outnumbers them. Look at objective numbers on language popularity, job boards, etc... You'll see that Ruby has pretty much vanished.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      I've never once seen "objective numbers on language popularity".
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  People have been saying that about Ruby for years, but what I look for is whether Ruby stops solving problems better than other languages do. My own shop has recently made the decision to replatform onto Node, for no real reason that I can discover. Just seemed to be a "oh let's all go learn the new hotness over here and toss away our existing architecture in order to do it. When something I wanted I found out was unmaintained in Ruby, I almost went along whole-heartedly with this new direction. But I've found something even more fundamental that's unmaintained in Node that's got me back in the "just use Ruby, it works and I know it really well" camp. Faddish behavior on the parts of developers doesn't really concern me. I was never concerned that all my RDBMS knowledge would get tossed into the shitter when Mongo hit the scene. A steady decline doesn't bother me. COBOL has been declining for 30 years, and you can still make a fine living supporting COBOL codebases. No, devs can do whatever they want, there's always going to be that pragmatic group of engineers that will use Ruby because it's still the best at what it does.
kjeetgill 8y ago
That's how I feel about Python. It also feels like it has a unique mental ergonomics. We're both super biased in that regard; everyone has a language they prefer to think in. Usually a dynamic, malleable one. Who thought perl would die? That said, I'm going to agree with sibling comments and give Python one big, big, advantage over Ruby: it's made inroads into a ton more domains such as numerical computing, duct tape programming, bioinformatics, ml/ai etc. It's installed by default in nearly every *nix flavor, mac OS included.
- vgy7ujm 8y ago
  Perl is no more dead than Ruby at least.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Ruby's the only language that fits the mind better. Look, I really like Ruby, too, but the idea that it is the one language that “fits the mind better” and is, for that reason, immune to the normal ebb and flow of language popularity is both amazingly parochial in the first case and empirically false in the last case.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  What brought me to that conclusion was my rejection of Scheme. I learned Scheme first, through HtDP, which absolutely blew my mind. I wanted to use Scheme for everything, but instead made the pragmatic choice to learn Ruby so that I could more easily find a job, and just use HtDP concepts in my Ruby programs. Well after awhile I realized I didn't miss Scheme. Like, at all. I had to really think hard about why. The first insight I had was that, well, syntax really does matter, and the paren-soup just isn't aesthetic. The second thing I realized was that Ruby's object model is just far more intuitive than any other way of dealing with objects. It's just, well, elegant. Everything's an object, everything has a class. This is what Crystal misses. And it can't because of its static nature, types can't be a class. A certain kind of reflection is impossible. And this is where static vs. dynamic comes in. Static forces you to write boilerplate. Dynamic lets you write it when you need it. You want dynamic until you want static. It's just that simple. No one is inherently better, they're just better suited to different situations. You want to flow from one to the other, not get handcuffed. This makes dynamic inherently better, because you can build a static type checker on top of a dynamic language, but to put dynamic typing inside a static language is just always going to be a kludge. If I can get pleasing syntax, an elegant object model, and gradual typing in a language that's also faster than Ruby, I'd jump on it. But every other language makes compromises on these points for one reason or another. Of all three, it seems the object model is the most difficult to implement, but it's one I rely on to get me out of jams. I don't often need metaprogramming, but when I do, it saves me a lot of time. And I've never run into anything else like it save in the Lisps. If I didn't have Ruby, I'd be using a Lisp. Having metaprogramming available, even if you're not using it, gives a real sense of safety, not against silly bugs, but against the much bigger possibility, of making poor abstractions. In Ruby, once I've realized I've made a bad abstraction, I can take the working code and metaprogram it, keeping behavior working, until it's using the semantics I need from it. This makes me far more confident to just knock up systems as quickly as possible, safe in the understanding that I can turn any semantics into any other semantics when I need to. You can fix the propensity to make type errors in a dynamic language with discipline, but you can't fix the propensity to make wrong abstractions with any amount or kind of discipline that I've ever been able to see. But I'm also surprised just how much syntax impacts my desire to actually write code. There's something about Ruby's code block delimiters that are more pleasing than either whitespace or bracket delimiters. I don't mind bracket delimiters if the whole block is on one line. But to force me to use brackets for multi-line code blocks, the so-called C syntax, well I don't find it half as aesthetically pleasing as Ruby. Is it just personal preference? Perhaps. But I think a hundred years is going to really clarify everything and languages will lose their utility advantages over each other and so all that's left will be aesthetics. And I think Ruby just has everybody beat in this area.
crimsonalucard 8y ago
You are a beginner. Ruby is a dying language that hit it's high point and died and now is at it's at a low point and not going anywhere. It's time has passed like php and now it's used mostly for devops scripting as the technical debt the language accumulates is generally too high even for web apps. Python, C++, C, Java and javascript are the languages with staying power that came and never went. If you were in the industry that long you'd know that most of the languages I mentioned have serious issues and problems and that the languages staying power has nothing to do with how they fit the "mind" or how good they are. If you weren't a beginner you'd also note that ruby, like python and like javascript has serious issues when it comes to writing long lasting, reliable code. To code something as reliable and complex as an operating system in ruby would lead to huge amounts of technical debt. As a ruby or python code base grows in complexity it becomes more and more unmaintainable... It would be a mistake to write super complex systems in python or ruby because such systems benefit highly from type checking. Your comments indicate to me that it doesn't matter how long you've been programming... you lack the experience to understand this concept. Ruby is better for scripting then it is for writing applications. What I have learned over the years is that programming is more about combatting our own faulty human nature, our own propensity to make mistakes. Ironically, the more expressive a language is, the more it gives, us the opportunity to express this fault. Power comes from restriction. Type checking is one such restriction.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  You are offering up your lived experience as wisdom without any rationale as to why I should accept your conclusions over my own. Just an endless cavalcade of "you are a beginner and you lack experience." As such it's falling on deaf ears.
  - crimsonalucard 8y ago
    I don't have the time to explain the logic behind my wisdom. I can only show you the door as my conclusions are avenues you obviously haven't explored. It's up to you whether you want to take the blue pill or the red pill.