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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.

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.