4 ms·

Ruby Isn't Fun Anymore

39 points by qhoxie 18y ago

jm4 18y ago
Move along, nothing to see here... Seriously... This is just some random blog entry about how Ruby isn't fun anymore because it's no longer a cool-kids-only thing. "Now it's just what we do for a living." Blah, blah, blah... Spare me the whining. Did people vote this thing up without reading it just because it's about Ruby or is there something particularly significant and worthwhile about this post?
- ph0rque 18y ago
  Well, the author is a YC alumnus who runs a cloud-based RoR hosting service... not saying that this means we HN'ers should upvote on the basis of appeal to authority.
- t0pj 18y ago
  It's possible that some of us are looking through the headlines, and saving them for reading at a later time. The fact that the story gets voted up is a consequence of this, perhaps.
  - jm4 18y ago
    Very good point.
- juanpablo 18y ago
  He's not whining but saying "it's the start of a new era". Read the full article not just the first paragraph.
- jimbokun 18y ago
  No whining in the article I read. Which one did you read?
- timr 18y ago
  I was thinking something similar: if "not fun" means "Ruby is becoming a stable, documented, performant language that can be used for real work" then I, for one, welcome our new adult overlords. (Of course, there's still a long way to go until those criteria are satisfied, so I suppose it's still somewhat fun. Maybe not dance-around-naked-with-a-lampshade-on-your-head fun, but then, Zed's moved on...)
bdittmer 18y ago
Ruby has a very long way to go before it is the "status quo".
jcromartie 18y ago
I think this is true. Part of the fun of Ruby a few years ago was "sneaking it in" in a particular environment and having people wonder where you found the time to develop all of these new utilities you were using.
- lackbeard 18y ago
  I don't understand this at all. Not saying it's wrong. Just saying that I don't seem to be wired this way. What I find fun about ruby is that, for better or worse, the language makes it convenient to express programs in a way that is very close to how I naturally think about them. Also: it's got pretty good libraries and a good community. I would've found this blog post worth reading if the author would've explained why the shift from upstart to accepted technology means that for people like him ruby is no longer fun.
zach 18y ago
Well then, maybe Clojure or Arc can get some of that new relationship energy. They need it more than Ruby does. I'll still be writing Ruby though.
iamwil 18y ago
I guess it wouldn't be fun anymore if you got your fun from being seen as edgy, feeling like you're subversive, or from your chatting it up with other developers about it. But if you got your fun from playing around with the language itself, exploring its nooks and crannies, and bring what you learned to other languages, there's no end to what fun you can have. _why re-discovered adding and removing mixins from digging around the late Guy's archives, and implemented it as mixico http://hackety.org/2008/10/06/mixingOurWayOutOfInstanceEval.html http://hackety.org/2008/10/06/mixingOurWayOutOfInstanceEval.... And hell, this guy implemented fizzbuzz using C++ metaprogramming. http://web.telia.com/~u43518104/articles/fizzbuzz.htm http://web.telia.com/~u43518104/articles/fizzbuzz.htm
bisceglie 18y ago
I thought the post would touch on the drama and politics that have come up in the past year. I'm relatively new to ruby (~2 years) - and this might just be a community thing that every language eco-system cycles through... But regardless, I think that ruby has a while before it loses steam. It's inherently a fun language
markessien 18y ago
Ruby is stabilizing, but it's stabilizing in a bad way. It's establishing itself as a language for people who throw tantrums, claim they would never hire a person who does not use a mac, and whose cat-fighting would put cats to shame. Python, on the other hand, is establishing itself as a serious tool for serious programmers. Python developers don't get calls from crazy teenagers and blog about it. People like that are swimming in a pond, and they are holding such long discussions about the state of the water in the pond, that they don't notice the rivers, lakes and oceans around them. I would still not bet any money on Ruby.
- ionfish 18y ago
  It seems a lot more likely to me that it's stabilising as a language whose users are absurdly stereotyped in the manner you've just done.
  - markessien 18y ago
    My samples are all based on recent ruby community users blog posts.
    - teej 18y ago
      It's sad to think that you draw generalizations from the people with the loudest voices.
      - paulgb 18y ago
        It might be sad, but I don't blame him. The signal-to-noise ratio for Python related material is higher than for Ruby in my experience.
        tptacek 18y ago
        It's funny that the reputations used to be reversed; that the Python community was insular and unfriendly to newcomers, and the Ruby community was welcoming and helpful. What you can clearly see between the tenors of the two communities is that there is more surface-level drama in the Ruby community. What that has to do with anything professional, I have no idea. I read Ruby blog posts and mailing list entries, but I don't write them; I write code (and here) instead.
thomasmallen 18y ago
I just tried patting myself on the back too. Wow, that felt wonderful.
comatose_kid 18y ago
All of this 'meta' language talk is tiresome. Just build something and talk about that, please.
jrockway 18y ago
Don't tell the Ruby folks this -- but a lot of us still have a lot of fun with Perl. I also enjoy Common Lisp. Just like the adage, "you can write bad code in any langauge", well, you can bore yourself to death in any language, as well. If you are doing boring things, your programming langauge choice isn't going to magically make something fun. (The opposite isn't true, though. If you pick Java or PHP for your project, you won't have much time for having fun.) But don't worry, there will always be a new language for the fanbois to latch on to. This week, it's Clojure. (And for the record, I like Clojure. It's just hard to read anything about Lisp and not hear 138 Clojure fanbois talk about "OMG ITS THE JVM!!1", and that is pretty annoying. Blog posters should be required to install the language and write "hello world" before they start advocating it.)

39 points by qhoxie 18y ago

jm4 18y ago

Move along, nothing to see here... Seriously... This is just some random blog entry about how Ruby isn't fun anymore because it's no longer a cool-kids-only thing. "Now it's just what we do for a living." Blah, blah, blah... Spare me the whining. Did people vote this thing up without reading it just because it's about Ruby or is there something particularly significant and worthwhile about this post?

ph0rque 18y ago
Well, the author is a YC alumnus who runs a cloud-based RoR hosting service... not saying that this means we HN'ers should upvote on the basis of appeal to authority.
t0pj 18y ago
It's possible that some of us are looking through the headlines, and saving them for reading at a later time. The fact that the story gets voted up is a consequence of this, perhaps.
- jm4 18y ago
  Very good point.
juanpablo 18y ago
He's not whining but saying "it's the start of a new era". Read the full article not just the first paragraph.
jimbokun 18y ago
No whining in the article I read. Which one did you read?
timr 18y ago
I was thinking something similar: if "not fun" means "Ruby is becoming a stable, documented, performant language that can be used for real work" then I, for one, welcome our new adult overlords. (Of course, there's still a long way to go until those criteria are satisfied, so I suppose it's still somewhat fun. Maybe not dance-around-naked-with-a-lampshade-on-your-head fun, but then, Zed's moved on...)

bdittmer 18y ago

Ruby has a very long way to go before it is the "status quo".

jcromartie 18y ago

I think this is true. Part of the fun of Ruby a few years ago was "sneaking it in" in a particular environment and having people wonder where you found the time to develop all of these new utilities you were using.

lackbeard 18y ago
I don't understand this at all. Not saying it's wrong. Just saying that I don't seem to be wired this way. What I find fun about ruby is that, for better or worse, the language makes it convenient to express programs in a way that is very close to how I naturally think about them. Also: it's got pretty good libraries and a good community. I would've found this blog post worth reading if the author would've explained why the shift from upstart to accepted technology means that for people like him ruby is no longer fun.

zach 18y ago

Well then, maybe Clojure or Arc can get some of that new relationship energy. They need it more than Ruby does. I'll still be writing Ruby though.

iamwil 18y ago

I guess it wouldn't be fun anymore if you got your fun from being seen as edgy, feeling like you're subversive, or from your chatting it up with other developers about it. But if you got your fun from playing around with the language itself, exploring its nooks and crannies, and bring what you learned to other languages, there's no end to what fun you can have. _why re-discovered adding and removing mixins from digging around the late Guy's archives, and implemented it as mixico http://hackety.org/2008/10/06/mixingOurWayOutOfInstanceEval.html http://hackety.org/2008/10/06/mixingOurWayOutOfInstanceEval.... And hell, this guy implemented fizzbuzz using C++ metaprogramming. http://web.telia.com/~u43518104/articles/fizzbuzz.htm http://web.telia.com/~u43518104/articles/fizzbuzz.htm

bisceglie 18y ago

I thought the post would touch on the drama and politics that have come up in the past year. I'm relatively new to ruby (~2 years) - and this might just be a community thing that every language eco-system cycles through... But regardless, I think that ruby has a while before it loses steam. It's inherently a fun language

markessien 18y ago

Ruby is stabilizing, but it's stabilizing in a bad way. It's establishing itself as a language for people who throw tantrums, claim they would never hire a person who does not use a mac, and whose cat-fighting would put cats to shame. Python, on the other hand, is establishing itself as a serious tool for serious programmers. Python developers don't get calls from crazy teenagers and blog about it. People like that are swimming in a pond, and they are holding such long discussions about the state of the water in the pond, that they don't notice the rivers, lakes and oceans around them. I would still not bet any money on Ruby.

ionfish 18y ago
It seems a lot more likely to me that it's stabilising as a language whose users are absurdly stereotyped in the manner you've just done.
- markessien 18y ago
  My samples are all based on recent ruby community users blog posts.
  - teej 18y ago
    It's sad to think that you draw generalizations from the people with the loudest voices.
    - paulgb 18y ago
      It might be sad, but I don't blame him. The signal-to-noise ratio for Python related material is higher than for Ruby in my experience.
      - tptacek 18y ago
        It's funny that the reputations used to be reversed; that the Python community was insular and unfriendly to newcomers, and the Ruby community was welcoming and helpful. What you can clearly see between the tenors of the two communities is that there is more surface-level drama in the Ruby community. What that has to do with anything professional, I have no idea. I read Ruby blog posts and mailing list entries, but I don't write them; I write code (and here) instead.

thomasmallen 18y ago

I just tried patting myself on the back too. Wow, that felt wonderful.

comatose_kid 18y ago

All of this 'meta' language talk is tiresome. Just build something and talk about that, please.

jrockway 18y ago

Don't tell the Ruby folks this -- but a lot of us still have a lot of fun with Perl. I also enjoy Common Lisp. Just like the adage, "you can write bad code in any langauge", well, you can bore yourself to death in any language, as well. If you are doing boring things, your programming langauge choice isn't going to magically make something fun. (The opposite isn't true, though. If you pick Java or PHP for your project, you won't have much time for having fun.) But don't worry, there will always be a new language for the fanbois to latch on to. This week, it's Clojure. (And for the record, I like Clojure. It's just hard to read anything about Lisp and not hear 138 Clojure fanbois talk about "OMG ITS THE JVM!!1", and that is pretty annoying. Blog posters should be required to install the language and write "hello world" before they start advocating it.)