3 ms·

Is Ruby still a thing in web development? It seems to me most backend use Java, C#, Node with a bit of PHP here and there.

pech0rin 3y ago
yes of course it is. Shopify is Rails, as are countless other companies.
- pampa 3y ago
  There is some life in Rails, but new greenfield rails projects are rare. It is mostly legacy stuff now. The ecosystem is slowly fading away. Big industrial libs are still good, but a lot of smaller projects are abandonware, last updated in 18-19. The cool kids moved on to Go, Rust, TS, Elixir etc.
  - mirekrusin 3y ago
    It always puzzled me why Crystal didn't catch up? It seems like they just had to publish couple of benchmarks and articles here and there and that could have been it. As it has good C interop story it could have a good chance riding on AI hype wave few years later in this alternative history.
    - unrealhoang 3y ago
      Because there's not enough differences/advantages compared to Go.
      - mirekrusin 3y ago
        Metaprogramming, null safety, syntax familiarity (with Ruby), algebraic types - there are quite a lot of advantages/differences, no?
        bwilliams 3y ago
        I’m not sure if it changed, but Crystal was limited to a single core which I imagine made it easier to choose Go over Crystal. That and I’ve found that folks often aren’t very receptive to Ruby like syntaxes initially.
        mirekrusin 3y ago
        This thread's context is large rails userbase around 2008'ish (people were changing computers from pcs to macs with textmate to do rails, perception of devs changed from nerds to cool kids - the whole thing was quite huge) that dissolved substantially. Crystal's syntax in this context feels like huge wasted/missed opportunity.
    - paradox460 3y ago
      Crystal had a bit of a slow start. It was promising, but the deployment issues persisted longer than they should have, and by the time they were fixed, you had other toolchains that filled the same niche. Elixir did "ruby" better than crystal OR ruby did. I really wanted to like Crystal, and used it for a few projects. But the immaturity and timing was it's kryptonite.
    - jlffwoymasdf 3y ago
      > It always puzzled me why Crystal didn't catch up? M:N wasn't added until late 2019 :( -- https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/8112 https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/8112
  - jlffwoymasdf 3y ago
    This claim seems to be supported by Google Trends [1] Rails has been on a downward trend for the last 6 years. [1] https://trends.google.co.in/trends/explore?cat=958&date=2017-01-05%202023-12-05&q=%2Fm%2F0505cl,%2Fm%2F09gbxjr,%2Fm%2F0dsbpg6,%2Fm%2F0n50hxv,%2Fm%2F0pl075p#TIMESERIES https://trends.google.co.in/trends/explore?cat=958&date=2017...
Alifatisk 3y ago
I would say so, I am subscribed to a mailing list which sums of what's happening within the Ruby and Rails community every week, and there are constantly new startups or projects going on.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  An interesting point is that Twitter started in rails and migrated to something (java?) that was faster after they got users. Ideally it would not be necessary to fully replace the application after launch but getting it out the door quickly to start iterating has its upsides.
  - mattmcknight 3y ago
    The biggest problem Twitter had was using MySQL for data storage.They moved to Scala, and while it was not quite a disaster, it did slow progress and also had to be largely simplified. Meanwhile places like GitHub and Shopify proved you could keep on scaling with Rails.
    - hu3 3y ago
      What? Shopify and GitHub uses MySQL heavily. And so does Youtube and other behemoths. Where did you get the notion that MySQL doesn't scale?
      - mattmcknight 3y ago
        Exactly- using Twitter's problems on Rails as evidence it doesn't scale is only slightly more wrong than blaming on them on MySQL. Twitter started moving to Cassandra in 2010 to deal with scaling issues they were having with MySQL sharding (gizzard), but continued to release patches to MySQL to address their needs, then eventually created their own data store, Manhattan, optimized for their particular usage patterns. None of this means MySQL (or Rails) can't scale.
        3y ago
regularfry 3y ago
Last two orgs (and they're large orgs) I've been in have phased it out in favour of node or python on the basis that nobody wants to hire for it. Short-sighted in my view, but that's not a battle I can win.
Exoristos 3y ago
More than "a bit" of PHP, lad.

pech0rin 3y ago

yes of course it is. Shopify is Rails, as are countless other companies.

pampa 3y ago
There is some life in Rails, but new greenfield rails projects are rare. It is mostly legacy stuff now. The ecosystem is slowly fading away. Big industrial libs are still good, but a lot of smaller projects are abandonware, last updated in 18-19. The cool kids moved on to Go, Rust, TS, Elixir etc.
- mirekrusin 3y ago
  It always puzzled me why Crystal didn't catch up? It seems like they just had to publish couple of benchmarks and articles here and there and that could have been it. As it has good C interop story it could have a good chance riding on AI hype wave few years later in this alternative history.
  - unrealhoang 3y ago
    Because there's not enough differences/advantages compared to Go.
    - mirekrusin 3y ago
      Metaprogramming, null safety, syntax familiarity (with Ruby), algebraic types - there are quite a lot of advantages/differences, no?
      - bwilliams 3y ago
        I’m not sure if it changed, but Crystal was limited to a single core which I imagine made it easier to choose Go over Crystal. That and I’ve found that folks often aren’t very receptive to Ruby like syntaxes initially.
        mirekrusin 3y ago
        This thread's context is large rails userbase around 2008'ish (people were changing computers from pcs to macs with textmate to do rails, perception of devs changed from nerds to cool kids - the whole thing was quite huge) that dissolved substantially. Crystal's syntax in this context feels like huge wasted/missed opportunity.
  - paradox460 3y ago
    Crystal had a bit of a slow start. It was promising, but the deployment issues persisted longer than they should have, and by the time they were fixed, you had other toolchains that filled the same niche. Elixir did "ruby" better than crystal OR ruby did. I really wanted to like Crystal, and used it for a few projects. But the immaturity and timing was it's kryptonite.
  - jlffwoymasdf 3y ago
    > It always puzzled me why Crystal didn't catch up? M:N wasn't added until late 2019 :( -- https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/8112 https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/8112
- jlffwoymasdf 3y ago
  This claim seems to be supported by Google Trends [1] Rails has been on a downward trend for the last 6 years. [1] https://trends.google.co.in/trends/explore?cat=958&date=2017-01-05%202023-12-05&q=%2Fm%2F0505cl,%2Fm%2F09gbxjr,%2Fm%2F0dsbpg6,%2Fm%2F0n50hxv,%2Fm%2F0pl075p#TIMESERIES https://trends.google.co.in/trends/explore?cat=958&date=2017...

Alifatisk 3y ago

I would say so, I am subscribed to a mailing list which sums of what's happening within the Ruby and Rails community every week, and there are constantly new startups or projects going on.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
An interesting point is that Twitter started in rails and migrated to something (java?) that was faster after they got users. Ideally it would not be necessary to fully replace the application after launch but getting it out the door quickly to start iterating has its upsides.
- mattmcknight 3y ago
  The biggest problem Twitter had was using MySQL for data storage.They moved to Scala, and while it was not quite a disaster, it did slow progress and also had to be largely simplified. Meanwhile places like GitHub and Shopify proved you could keep on scaling with Rails.
  - hu3 3y ago
    What? Shopify and GitHub uses MySQL heavily. And so does Youtube and other behemoths. Where did you get the notion that MySQL doesn't scale?
    - mattmcknight 3y ago
      Exactly- using Twitter's problems on Rails as evidence it doesn't scale is only slightly more wrong than blaming on them on MySQL. Twitter started moving to Cassandra in 2010 to deal with scaling issues they were having with MySQL sharding (gizzard), but continued to release patches to MySQL to address their needs, then eventually created their own data store, Manhattan, optimized for their particular usage patterns. None of this means MySQL (or Rails) can't scale.
      - 3y ago

regularfry 3y ago

Last two orgs (and they're large orgs) I've been in have phased it out in favour of node or python on the basis that nobody wants to hire for it. Short-sighted in my view, but that's not a battle I can win.

Exoristos 3y ago

More than "a bit" of PHP, lad.