5 ms·
Rather tangential, however Ruby seems to exist entirely on the backs of Shopify now [1], and every Ruby-related post on here goes back to a Shopify employee. Di
by defaultname 5y ago
Rather tangential, however Ruby seems to exist entirely on the backs of Shopify now [1], and every Ruby-related post on here goes back to a Shopify employee. Did the founder of Shopify start with Ruby so now they’re wed to it culturally? Each of these Ruby posts has a gross mismatch between engagement and score.
I apologize for the digression, but Shopify today reminds me of some Delphi/object pascal shops I’d engaged with earlier in my career. Where the tooling became the primary focus and identity of the staff rather than the solutions (a sort of cargo culting off of that initial business success), and that focus meant the firm ended up being staffed with what could best be described as big fish in little ponds (e.g. the “Delphi expert” who was the guy who stuck with Delphi after everyone else had moved on to other technologies), in a recursive loop.
[1] - other successful companies started with Ruby / RoR (though in many cases it could be called legacy), but right now it seems that 100% of Ruby advocacy comes out of the halls of Shopify. The firm has turned to evangelism.
- dyeje 5y agoThere are plenty of large companies in the Ruby space. Some of the more notable ones being Shopify, Stripe, Airbnb, and GitHub.
- mekster 5y agoAlso Discourse is written in ruby.
- Zababa 5y agoI don't think that's totally true, Stripe has Sorbet for example. On the other hand, Ruby seem to be less popular than before and almost no one uses it in Europe. But Ruby 3 seems very nice. It's hard to predict its future.
- Lammy 5y ago> right now it seems that 100% of Ruby advocacy comes out of the halls of Shopify While we're sharing anecdotes: I like to advocate for Ruby but have never been a Shopify employee or even customer :) e: where 'customer' == seller
- ksec 5y ago>The firm has turned to evangelism. I mean, materials coming out of Ruby and Rails are so rare and few I could hardly call them evangelism. And for the first time ever in history RoR has some decent resources backing it. Compared to Python, JS, Go. And if people dont like the word dying, then RoR is definitely in decline. So doing a little bit of push and PR or evangelism isn't so bad.
- flavorjones 5y agoJust a reminder of how much of YC's portfolio value is based on firms that chose Ruby: https://charliereese.ca/article/top-50-y-combinator-tech-startups https://charliereese.ca/article/top-50-y-combinator-tech-sta... https://twitter.com/logicmason/status/1371255029412233218 https://twitter.com/logicmason/status/1371255029412233218
- defaultname 5y agoThe overwhelming bulk of the Ruby entrants on that list formed in 2009-2012 (as did Shopify). At the time Ruby was the love interest of HN, and it isn't at all surprising that the HN-affiliated had an affinity to it. The next cycle will be built on whatever the current hotness is. Rinse and repeat. No one should cargo cult off of that. Ultimately the product is magnitudes more important than the technology (at least in most cases).