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Rust's cargo, JS's yarn and the grand daddy of them all Ruby's bundler address all these issues. Even newer versions of Gradle support a workflow where you spec

Rust's cargo, JS's yarn and the grand daddy of them all Ruby's bundler address all these issues. Even newer versions of Gradle support a workflow where you specify the versions you know you want and just on everything else, including transitive dependencies, down.

jbverschoor 7y ago
Yeah.. not sure why the love for Ruby faded in startup-world
- PikachuEXE 7y ago
  I think many people still "love" ruby I never liked Python from day 1 of my work (I am Ruby on Rails Dev for my job) Wish there are more useful projects written in ruby :)
  - fellellor 7y ago
    I am trying to find a place in the industry - again, starting from RoR. I absolutely love Ruby. And all this talk of "Ruby dying" makes me feel sad. The rational thing to do is to move on, and learn something popular, like node.js but the more I see Ruby in action, I just can't pull myself away from it. I had managed to get a job as a Java developer a long time ago, but at that time all I could do was barely write toy apps in Java and I had no exposure to stuff like design patterns. The whole experience left me in a bad place. Now after all these years, Ruby feels like a breath of fresh air, and the texts that I have come across on the subject - Design Patterns in Ruby, Practical OOD in Ruby, Ruby under a Microscope etc. have increased my interest in the language. But more and more frequent articles on Ruby's decline are pretty disheartening.
    - jhbadger 7y ago
      Ruby's future may actually not be Ruby itself. Probably the major problem with Ruby is its performance, which is slow even compared to other interpreted languages. While I'm not sure it is really production ready yet, Crystal is very interesting -- it's a native compiled statically typed language that nevertheless feels very much like Ruby. Check it out if you haven't.
      - jbverschoor 7y ago
        It’s faster than python. And crystal is often faster than go.
      - fellellor 7y ago
        I saw Tenderlove's interview on SE Radio, about Ruby internals. He seemed optimistic, but also because he's been working on a performance related project for the past few years now. Anyway, I'm hopeful.
- ericd 7y ago
  Probably JS taking over web dev and invading the server.
- x3n0ph3n3 7y ago
  From personal experience, hiring for Ruby development seemed to get a lot harder and of the few candidates that applied, many couldn't do FizzBuzz.
  - TomK32 7y ago
    OTOH I couldn't find a Ruby job in my town. Learning Scala these days.
  - pmontra 7y ago
    I've been working since the 90s and I never attempted to do FizzBuzz. Is it really relevant? Maybe to screen junior developers out of college?
    - estsauver 7y ago
      So, as someone who spends maybe 20% of their time hiring, it's still a very effective screen. You wouldn't believe how many people can't do it. People at big companies, respected places. It's surprising.
      - mooreds 7y ago
        Wow, that's depressing. I used a different screen (having people make change based on an arbitrary amount, so if the input was 81, you'd return [25, 25, 25, 5, 1], as we were in the USA) and it was also helpful. I didn't track the number of people that it stymied though.
        estsauver 7y ago
        Yah, that's also a good one. I like the variant that asks how many different ways you can make change for a given amount and a given array of currencies. (I always feel weird talking about interview questions publicly, but honestly anyone who prepares that diligently deserves to go to the next stage. If anyone's reading this because they're preparing for an interview with me and I ask this question, just mention this comment and I'll be impressed.)
- pmontra 7y ago
  I love Ruby but my customers are with Python and Elixir now. I do Ruby 5 to 10% of the time. Nearly all my personal project except some Node.
- mooreds 7y ago
  I think ruby is alive and well for a lot of startups. I do think it is being squeezed on three sides though. * From javascript. If you have a app like front end, you are going to use js. Why not have the whole stack be js and have your developers use only one language. * From python for anything web + data science. Again, why not have your whole stack be in one language? * From lack of hype. Rails is still evolving, but a lot of packages are not seeing releases (I have used packages 3-4 years old). This indicates to me that the energy isn't there in the community the way it used to be. I have seen the consultants who are always on the bleeding edge move on to elixir. That said I have seen plenty of startups using ruby (really rails) and staffing when I hired for ruby wasn't an issue. I do help run a local ruby meetup and attendance is good but not exceptional (15-40 people every month). So that may skew my viewpoint.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    "From JavaScript" also includes another side: When your frontend is in JS, your backend can be a simple REST API. And building a REST API requires much less framework than building a server-side-rendering webapp does, so it's tempting to use Go or Rust or whatever you like.
    - mooreds 7y ago
      Agreed. I still think that ruby is great for jamming out an API (far better in terms of development speed than go or rust) but a lot of the great gems that can speed up development assume server side rendering. That plus the fact that go/rust/whatever are probably more "interesting" and faster (at runtime) than ruby is an additional obstacle (for ruby!).
    - jbverschoor 7y ago
      You’ll need (probably) at least: -Database connection -An ORM -Middleware against attacks / rate limiting -Caching -Jobs / workers -A rendering engine for email and maybe pdf -Some sort of admin/backend -Logging -Validation I’ve written an API once from scratch. Actually twice. First time in Modena, because it was all the hype, but it was arcane. Then Sinatra, where I ended up creating all of the above. Rails is excellent for APIs. Rust is nice, but I’m not sure if I’d like it for all of an API. I don’t like go. Crystal seems great, because it’s typed and it’s also super fast.
- crusso 7y ago
  I loved Ruby, but unfortunately it didn't hold on to any kind of "killer app" role after Rails clones showed up in other language. I've switched to Elixir/Phoenix in that space and not looked back. With the rise in ML and data science over the past years, Python finally has a killer app that no other scripting languages come close to touching. I migrated completely from Ruby when I started dabbling in ML, Pandas, etc.
blaisio 7y ago
Go's new system addresses them all too. This is the other frustrating thing: there is this stockholm syndrome effect, because people are so used to dependency management being horrible, they think there are just no good dependency management systems, and they give up.
- scandinavian 7y ago
  What system is this? Isn't the built in package system still just pulling from github URL's?
  - foldr 7y ago
    No, there's a module system now: https://blog.golang.org/using-go-modules https://blog.golang.org/using-go-modules
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    GitHub is still the host for many of them, but there are Modules, so you get proper versioning and all that even when the place you end up getting them from is GitHub.
    - oehtXRwMkIs 7y ago
      Huh, nice to hear, I was waiting for this to happen but apparently missed it.
StavrosK 7y ago
Python's Poetry also addresses these issues.

jbverschoor 7y ago

Yeah.. not sure why the love for Ruby faded in startup-world

PikachuEXE 7y ago
I think many people still "love" ruby I never liked Python from day 1 of my work (I am Ruby on Rails Dev for my job) Wish there are more useful projects written in ruby :)
- fellellor 7y ago
  I am trying to find a place in the industry - again, starting from RoR. I absolutely love Ruby. And all this talk of "Ruby dying" makes me feel sad. The rational thing to do is to move on, and learn something popular, like node.js but the more I see Ruby in action, I just can't pull myself away from it. I had managed to get a job as a Java developer a long time ago, but at that time all I could do was barely write toy apps in Java and I had no exposure to stuff like design patterns. The whole experience left me in a bad place. Now after all these years, Ruby feels like a breath of fresh air, and the texts that I have come across on the subject - Design Patterns in Ruby, Practical OOD in Ruby, Ruby under a Microscope etc. have increased my interest in the language. But more and more frequent articles on Ruby's decline are pretty disheartening.
  - jhbadger 7y ago
    Ruby's future may actually not be Ruby itself. Probably the major problem with Ruby is its performance, which is slow even compared to other interpreted languages. While I'm not sure it is really production ready yet, Crystal is very interesting -- it's a native compiled statically typed language that nevertheless feels very much like Ruby. Check it out if you haven't.
    - jbverschoor 7y ago
      It’s faster than python. And crystal is often faster than go.
    - fellellor 7y ago
      I saw Tenderlove's interview on SE Radio, about Ruby internals. He seemed optimistic, but also because he's been working on a performance related project for the past few years now. Anyway, I'm hopeful.
ericd 7y ago
Probably JS taking over web dev and invading the server.
x3n0ph3n3 7y ago
From personal experience, hiring for Ruby development seemed to get a lot harder and of the few candidates that applied, many couldn't do FizzBuzz.
- TomK32 7y ago
  OTOH I couldn't find a Ruby job in my town. Learning Scala these days.
- pmontra 7y ago
  I've been working since the 90s and I never attempted to do FizzBuzz. Is it really relevant? Maybe to screen junior developers out of college?
  - estsauver 7y ago
    So, as someone who spends maybe 20% of their time hiring, it's still a very effective screen. You wouldn't believe how many people can't do it. People at big companies, respected places. It's surprising.
    - mooreds 7y ago
      Wow, that's depressing. I used a different screen (having people make change based on an arbitrary amount, so if the input was 81, you'd return [25, 25, 25, 5, 1], as we were in the USA) and it was also helpful. I didn't track the number of people that it stymied though.
      - estsauver 7y ago
        Yah, that's also a good one. I like the variant that asks how many different ways you can make change for a given amount and a given array of currencies. (I always feel weird talking about interview questions publicly, but honestly anyone who prepares that diligently deserves to go to the next stage. If anyone's reading this because they're preparing for an interview with me and I ask this question, just mention this comment and I'll be impressed.)
pmontra 7y ago
I love Ruby but my customers are with Python and Elixir now. I do Ruby 5 to 10% of the time. Nearly all my personal project except some Node.
mooreds 7y ago
I think ruby is alive and well for a lot of startups. I do think it is being squeezed on three sides though. * From javascript. If you have a app like front end, you are going to use js. Why not have the whole stack be js and have your developers use only one language. * From python for anything web + data science. Again, why not have your whole stack be in one language? * From lack of hype. Rails is still evolving, but a lot of packages are not seeing releases (I have used packages 3-4 years old). This indicates to me that the energy isn't there in the community the way it used to be. I have seen the consultants who are always on the bleeding edge move on to elixir. That said I have seen plenty of startups using ruby (really rails) and staffing when I hired for ruby wasn't an issue. I do help run a local ruby meetup and attendance is good but not exceptional (15-40 people every month). So that may skew my viewpoint.
- majewsky 7y ago
  "From JavaScript" also includes another side: When your frontend is in JS, your backend can be a simple REST API. And building a REST API requires much less framework than building a server-side-rendering webapp does, so it's tempting to use Go or Rust or whatever you like.
  - mooreds 7y ago
    Agreed. I still think that ruby is great for jamming out an API (far better in terms of development speed than go or rust) but a lot of the great gems that can speed up development assume server side rendering. That plus the fact that go/rust/whatever are probably more "interesting" and faster (at runtime) than ruby is an additional obstacle (for ruby!).
  - jbverschoor 7y ago
    You’ll need (probably) at least: -Database connection -An ORM -Middleware against attacks / rate limiting -Caching -Jobs / workers -A rendering engine for email and maybe pdf -Some sort of admin/backend -Logging -Validation I’ve written an API once from scratch. Actually twice. First time in Modena, because it was all the hype, but it was arcane. Then Sinatra, where I ended up creating all of the above. Rails is excellent for APIs. Rust is nice, but I’m not sure if I’d like it for all of an API. I don’t like go. Crystal seems great, because it’s typed and it’s also super fast.
crusso 7y ago
I loved Ruby, but unfortunately it didn't hold on to any kind of "killer app" role after Rails clones showed up in other language. I've switched to Elixir/Phoenix in that space and not looked back. With the rise in ML and data science over the past years, Python finally has a killer app that no other scripting languages come close to touching. I migrated completely from Ruby when I started dabbling in ML, Pandas, etc.

blaisio 7y ago

Go's new system addresses them all too. This is the other frustrating thing: there is this stockholm syndrome effect, because people are so used to dependency management being horrible, they think there are just no good dependency management systems, and they give up.

scandinavian 7y ago
What system is this? Isn't the built in package system still just pulling from github URL's?
- foldr 7y ago
  No, there's a module system now: https://blog.golang.org/using-go-modules https://blog.golang.org/using-go-modules
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  GitHub is still the host for many of them, but there are Modules, so you get proper versioning and all that even when the place you end up getting them from is GitHub.
  - oehtXRwMkIs 7y ago
    Huh, nice to hear, I was waiting for this to happen but apparently missed it.

StavrosK 7y ago

Python's Poetry also addresses these issues.