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I had the opportunity to run some hackatons / startup coaching last year with some CS student at University of Wisconsin- Madison. I spoke in front of some larg

I had the opportunity to run some hackatons / startup coaching last year with some CS student at University of Wisconsin- Madison. I spoke in front of some large lectures and asked students what languages they were learning. Literally no one out of a few hundred students was learning ruby. Go/nodejs/etherium is what people were putting their energy into.

conanbatt 7y ago
Yeah, rails does look out of style. But node backend development is unpleasant (at least compared to rails).
- kiernanmcgowan 7y ago
  Agreed - its just interesting to see the next generation of talent completely ignoring a major platform in current tech industry.
  - mtberatwork 7y ago
    I suppose they will be in for a bit of a shock when they try to make their way into the workforce to find out that the majority of enterprise-land is using Java or .Net and a bit of python mixed in.
    - BuckRogers 7y ago
      They shouldn't be surprised, if they're fully informed on the technical and business merits of every platform available. I wouldn't build a business on anything except CoreCLR or Hotspot. C# or Kotlin for me. I'm just talking out loud here, not to you specifically, but things are the way they are, for good reasons. It's not a "mistake", the way the landscape is today, most technical leads are not sheep. Technical & business requirements have been mulled over time and time again by many thoughtful people, usually leading to these two platforms. A lot of us don't care about what's cool. We demand true technical innovation to adopt a new platform, not technical churn and there's an awful lot of that, if not outright downgrades. For me, all these things matter. -Good tooling -Industrial-strength language design -Backwards compatibility and support -Breadth of domains you can target and target well (server-side, desktop, mobile) -Availability of talent for employers -Availability of jobs if you're an applicant
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    To be fair, Java/python people probably said the same things to the upcoming rails people at some point.
    - collyw 7y ago
      Perl was more popular then and to be honest most people were impressed at how quickly you could build something.
diveanon 7y ago
Learning a language is trivial, as an educator it is your responsibility to teach them that in order to be a successful developer they should be flexible and well rounded. Tribalism in tech helps no one.

conanbatt 7y ago

Yeah, rails does look out of style. But node backend development is unpleasant (at least compared to rails).

kiernanmcgowan 7y ago
Agreed - its just interesting to see the next generation of talent completely ignoring a major platform in current tech industry.
- mtberatwork 7y ago
  I suppose they will be in for a bit of a shock when they try to make their way into the workforce to find out that the majority of enterprise-land is using Java or .Net and a bit of python mixed in.
  - BuckRogers 7y ago
    They shouldn't be surprised, if they're fully informed on the technical and business merits of every platform available. I wouldn't build a business on anything except CoreCLR or Hotspot. C# or Kotlin for me. I'm just talking out loud here, not to you specifically, but things are the way they are, for good reasons. It's not a "mistake", the way the landscape is today, most technical leads are not sheep. Technical & business requirements have been mulled over time and time again by many thoughtful people, usually leading to these two platforms. A lot of us don't care about what's cool. We demand true technical innovation to adopt a new platform, not technical churn and there's an awful lot of that, if not outright downgrades. For me, all these things matter. -Good tooling -Industrial-strength language design -Backwards compatibility and support -Breadth of domains you can target and target well (server-side, desktop, mobile) -Availability of talent for employers -Availability of jobs if you're an applicant
- conanbatt 7y ago
  To be fair, Java/python people probably said the same things to the upcoming rails people at some point.
  - collyw 7y ago
    Perl was more popular then and to be honest most people were impressed at how quickly you could build something.

diveanon 7y ago

Learning a language is trivial, as an educator it is your responsibility to teach them that in order to be a successful developer they should be flexible and well rounded. Tribalism in tech helps no one.