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Meta question - has any language ever made a comeback? Not in terms of quality or features (many have had significant improvements obviously) but in terms of a

by jstx1 5y ago

Meta question - has any language ever made a comeback? Not in terms of quality or features (many have had significant improvements obviously) but in terms of adoption and getting back to the spot of "this is one of the go-to languages to do x".

herbst 5y ago
PHP kinda did with Laravel, suddenly PHP was cool again and startups were using it for a month or two :)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
johntdaly 5y ago
Can any language make a comeback to its original popularity? I would argue they can’t because they where overhyped. I’m not interested in getting back to the overhyped level of popularity. That kept me away from Ruby on Rails for a while. But getting to a “mature” point where we can admin, no we are not dying and yes we are one of the better solutions for web development, would be nice. Also the job market adjust to it would be nice in that it gets used to having people switch to Ruby from other languages again. The next hype bubble that hits the Ruby community is probably going to be something not related to web development. Look at Python and Machine Learning.
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  Ruby will not make a comback ever again. Maybe as configuration language. We (web dev, UI dev, game dev) need simple, fast stuff, something Go like but better. Maybe Swift? (haven't used Swift). Maybe V will deliver in the end.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > Maybe Swift? (haven't used Swift). Swift is really slow for web stuff. > We (web dev, UI dev, game dev) need simple, fast stuff, something Go like but better. Do you think "we" need something faster than Go for web stuff? Go is already fast enough for most use cases.
  - mega-tux 5y ago
    Crystal has Ruby similar syntax and Go like speed. Still needs mature a bit more
dnissley 5y ago
If you believe the TIOBE index, the popularity of python peaked around 2008-2009 and then slid to a low around 2014-2015 -- and now it's more popular than it's ever been. https://www.notonlycode.org/content/images/2020/09/Screenshot-2020-09-17-at-11.38.27-PM.png https://www.notonlycode.org/content/images/2020/09/Screensho...
- jstx1 5y ago
  > If you believe the TIOBE index I don't. I don't think anyone else should either. TIOBE counts number of hits returned by a weighted selection of search engines when you search for "<language> programming" - it's a useless metric.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That's mostly due to the popularity of Python in machine learning like projects. It's ideal for plumbing and Numpy/Tensorflow and CUDA bindings make it fast enough for real work.
mohanmcgeek 5y ago
I would put python in this category. Back in the RoR days, python had a very second class status in the web community. There were some famous web 2.0 companies that are using django. All the limelight was on Rails. These days, python is probably the second most popular langauge for after JavaScript in number of repos and maybe the go-to language for first time Devs. (Thanks to Zed Shaw) And there are significantly more people doing web app dev with Python now than with Ruby
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Python was kind of a cult-popular language in the 2000s. I did as much work as I could get away with in it; mostly system-level nuts and bolts kind of things, but also web apps. Django 1.2 was the killer app that made it so much easier to sell to teams. But by then, I think RoR was more fashionable.
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    It was. While I was using Rails for web dev, I was using python for Gtk apps.. Ubuntu had a visual Gtk app creator. I forgot what it was called. It generated python code by default. That whole Linux app ecosystem was python for a while. Then there was a brief period of Vala being used for this. Not sure what they use these days

by jstx1 5y ago

herbst 5y ago

PHP kinda did with Laravel, suddenly PHP was cool again and startups were using it for a month or two :)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

johntdaly 5y ago

Can any language make a comeback to its original popularity? I would argue they can’t because they where overhyped. I’m not interested in getting back to the overhyped level of popularity. That kept me away from Ruby on Rails for a while. But getting to a “mature” point where we can admin, no we are not dying and yes we are one of the better solutions for web development, would be nice. Also the job market adjust to it would be nice in that it gets used to having people switch to Ruby from other languages again. The next hype bubble that hits the Ruby community is probably going to be something not related to web development. Look at Python and Machine Learning.

machiaweliczny 5y ago
Ruby will not make a comback ever again. Maybe as configuration language. We (web dev, UI dev, game dev) need simple, fast stuff, something Go like but better. Maybe Swift? (haven't used Swift). Maybe V will deliver in the end.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Maybe Swift? (haven't used Swift). Swift is really slow for web stuff. > We (web dev, UI dev, game dev) need simple, fast stuff, something Go like but better. Do you think "we" need something faster than Go for web stuff? Go is already fast enough for most use cases.
- mega-tux 5y ago
  Crystal has Ruby similar syntax and Go like speed. Still needs mature a bit more

dnissley 5y ago

If you believe the TIOBE index, the popularity of python peaked around 2008-2009 and then slid to a low around 2014-2015 -- and now it's more popular than it's ever been. https://www.notonlycode.org/content/images/2020/09/Screenshot-2020-09-17-at-11.38.27-PM.png https://www.notonlycode.org/content/images/2020/09/Screensho...

jstx1 5y ago
> If you believe the TIOBE index I don't. I don't think anyone else should either. TIOBE counts number of hits returned by a weighted selection of search engines when you search for "<language> programming" - it's a useless metric.
jacquesm 5y ago
That's mostly due to the popularity of Python in machine learning like projects. It's ideal for plumbing and Numpy/Tensorflow and CUDA bindings make it fast enough for real work.

mohanmcgeek 5y ago

I would put python in this category. Back in the RoR days, python had a very second class status in the web community. There were some famous web 2.0 companies that are using django. All the limelight was on Rails. These days, python is probably the second most popular langauge for after JavaScript in number of repos and maybe the go-to language for first time Devs. (Thanks to Zed Shaw) And there are significantly more people doing web app dev with Python now than with Ruby

mywittyname 5y ago
Python was kind of a cult-popular language in the 2000s. I did as much work as I could get away with in it; mostly system-level nuts and bolts kind of things, but also web apps. Django 1.2 was the killer app that made it so much easier to sell to teams. But by then, I think RoR was more fashionable.
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  It was. While I was using Rails for web dev, I was using python for Gtk apps.. Ubuntu had a visual Gtk app creator. I forgot what it was called. It generated python code by default. That whole Linux app ecosystem was python for a while. Then there was a brief period of Vala being used for this. Not sure what they use these days