3 ms·

As opposed to Erlang?

yakubin 5y ago
My (outsider's) perception is that Ruby came and went, whereas Erlang came and stayed. Talking about their popularity in their niches. It's also much older than RoR, so in that picture it's also likelier to stay longer, regardless of temporary fluctuations. I'd also like to learn Erlang when I find the time and use it for projects in the future, whereas Ruby was never appealing to me. Each time I had to deal with it, it created a mess in my system.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  > Each time I had to deal with it, it created a mess in my system That's fine, that's your subjective experience which I'm not gonna argue with. But if you're trying to say here that Erlang is somehow more popular than Ruby for web development (or in general) that's quite ridiculous, not sure I wanna waste both our time engaging that.
- goatlover 5y ago
  > My (outsider's) perception is that Ruby came and went, That's like saying PHP came and went. Just because something is no longer the new hotness and doesn't get discussed a lot on HN doesn't mean nobody uses it. Both Ruby and Rails continue to be updated just like PHP and it's popular frameworks. If you compared the number of websites developed by either compared to Erlang, it's not even close. Elixir & Phoenix would be a better comparison, but Ruby is still top 20 in the Tiobe Index (PHP is top 10), and Elixir is somewhere hovering around the top 50.
  - yakubin 5y ago
    I don't see PHP this way. PHP was never the new hotness. It was never cool. Whereas Ruby definitely surfed the fad wave, and this wave is gone now. Similarly, Erlang was not a cool kid, it just was somewhere in the background at telecoms, and slowly started being used in other places. If I had to bet, I'd expect Ruby to be completely gone in 50 years, while Erlang will still be there.
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
      > PHP was never the new hotness. It was never cool It was kinda the de facto way to make websites at some point, together with Perl. it was definitely cool.

My (outsider's) perception is that Ruby came and went, whereas Erlang came and stayed. Talking about their popularity in their niches. It's also much older than RoR, so in that picture it's also likelier to stay longer, regardless of temporary fluctuations. I'd also like to learn Erlang when I find the time and use it for projects in the future, whereas Ruby was never appealing to me. Each time I had to deal with it, it created a mess in my system.

joelbluminator 5y ago
> Each time I had to deal with it, it created a mess in my system That's fine, that's your subjective experience which I'm not gonna argue with. But if you're trying to say here that Erlang is somehow more popular than Ruby for web development (or in general) that's quite ridiculous, not sure I wanna waste both our time engaging that.
goatlover 5y ago
> My (outsider's) perception is that Ruby came and went, That's like saying PHP came and went. Just because something is no longer the new hotness and doesn't get discussed a lot on HN doesn't mean nobody uses it. Both Ruby and Rails continue to be updated just like PHP and it's popular frameworks. If you compared the number of websites developed by either compared to Erlang, it's not even close. Elixir & Phoenix would be a better comparison, but Ruby is still top 20 in the Tiobe Index (PHP is top 10), and Elixir is somewhere hovering around the top 50.
- yakubin 5y ago
  I don't see PHP this way. PHP was never the new hotness. It was never cool. Whereas Ruby definitely surfed the fad wave, and this wave is gone now. Similarly, Erlang was not a cool kid, it just was somewhere in the background at telecoms, and slowly started being used in other places. If I had to bet, I'd expect Ruby to be completely gone in 50 years, while Erlang will still be there.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    > PHP was never the new hotness. It was never cool It was kinda the de facto way to make websites at some point, together with Perl. it was definitely cool.