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Is it just me or has the world moved on from Ruby? I'm seeing more companies and projects moving away from it than adopting it. It feels like Ruby had a nice sh

Is it just me or has the world moved on from Ruby? I'm seeing more companies and projects moving away from it than adopting it. It feels like Ruby had a nice shot at becoming a mainstream language thanks to Rails but it just ended up blowing up like a bubble.

excid3 14y ago
Plenty of people still use it, but like anything "being cool" doesn't last for that long. Lots of people still use Perl, but it's not necessarily talked about as being "cool" for example.
sanderjd 14y ago
It's just you! The Ruby community, especially the Rails portion, is undergoing a fantastic philosophical and tooling maturation, which is pushing its viability past its former fast-paced start-up confines and into a larger, but perhaps less sexy market. I'm not sure which companies and projects you're specifically referring to, but while we're throwing out anecdotes, it seems to me that companies "moving away" from Ruby are making pragmatic decisions in response to specific pain points, while keeping Ruby in place where it better solves other pain points. That's how it's supposed to work!
Andys 14y ago
The latest weekend-long Rails Camp to be held here in Australia (in 2 weeks time) sold out within minutes, as it always has. As a counterpoint, many people who attend spend their time at camp not doing Rails stuff.
veemjeem 14y ago
I think it just became a mainstream language. Many shops use ruby now, but nobody really talks how they're "using" ruby because it isn't cool anymore. Kinda like in the 2000's when everyone was talking about how they were using Java and VCs would throw money in their face. It's rare to see a company these days to evangelize their use of Java. These days people prefer talking about how they're using node.js or Go.
- codewright 14y ago
  There are secret weapons other than Node.js or Go, which don't necessarily make you more productive like moving from Java to Ruby.
up_and_up 14y ago
Any details or evidence to back this up? I see more and more job opps for people with Ruby skills: startups, BigCos, Gov, nonprofits, I know longtime java shops that are rewriting their apps in Ruby. I have worked with Ruby professionally for 5 years. From my perspective there is more opportunity now then years back, more high quality code being written, more problems can be solved in less time, etc This is still a very exciting place to be. I have found being good at Ruby has provided the highest ROI of my career.
petercooper 14y ago
It's still in heavy use. I think it has plateaued compared to some other technologies but it isn't declining at least. I say this as a publisher with fingers in the Ruby, JavaScript, and HTML5 pies (the latter two are growing more quickly but Ruby is far from dipping).
davesims 14y ago
Man, my anecdotal evidence is completely opposite, and I've been comparing notes with (some good) recruiters and other contacts around town for the last couple of years. Rails hit an inflection point in that period where even enterprises are comfortable with it. In DFW, traditionally a dense forest of Enterprisey .NET and J2EE projects, I've seen a LOT of new Rails gigs pop up. A number of startups (growing in this area), but also big companies like Raytheon. I had a long conversation with an Adobe recruiter last year about their Rails initiative, and unless someone can point me towards different information, is it not the case that most web startups default question now is -- "is there a good reason NOT to do this in Rails?" Rails and Ruby right now feel like Java circa the early 00s or thereabouts, where JVM performance concerns/FUD had clearly been dealt with and pretty much everyone was on board. My hunch is we may look back on the last couple of years as being a similar tipping point for Ruby/Rails.
thibaut_barrere 14y ago
I never got so many dev and CTO gigs/jobs proposals that now, and this for very different companies (startups, more classic companies etc).
dasil003 14y ago
If by world you mean trend-driven web dev blogosphere then yes, however that's sort of a risky thing to use as your sole input to reality.
xutopia 14y ago
I'm seeing settling happening (we don't need to build as many basic libraries as when rails was still in its infancy) but number of ruby users is growing steadily.
meskyanichi 14y ago
Ruby/Rails has practically become the poster child for every (modern) web hosting company. EngineYard, Heroku, DotCloud, ShellyCloud, 6Sync, Webbynode, Linode, Brightbox, and the list goes on. Let's not forget the advancement of JRuby (JVM Ruby), Rubinius (LLVM Ruby), MacRuby (For Native OSX Desktop Apps), RubyMotion (For Native iOS Apps), mRuby (For Embedded Apps). Not to mention the truck load of conferences every year, the new and existing, accessible and easy-to-use open source projects that are being released and updated frequently. "Is it just me or has the world moved on from Ruby?".sub("from", "to") We're doing our best. :)

excid3 14y ago

Plenty of people still use it, but like anything "being cool" doesn't last for that long. Lots of people still use Perl, but it's not necessarily talked about as being "cool" for example.

sanderjd 14y ago

It's just you! The Ruby community, especially the Rails portion, is undergoing a fantastic philosophical and tooling maturation, which is pushing its viability past its former fast-paced start-up confines and into a larger, but perhaps less sexy market. I'm not sure which companies and projects you're specifically referring to, but while we're throwing out anecdotes, it seems to me that companies "moving away" from Ruby are making pragmatic decisions in response to specific pain points, while keeping Ruby in place where it better solves other pain points. That's how it's supposed to work!

Andys 14y ago

The latest weekend-long Rails Camp to be held here in Australia (in 2 weeks time) sold out within minutes, as it always has. As a counterpoint, many people who attend spend their time at camp not doing Rails stuff.

veemjeem 14y ago

I think it just became a mainstream language. Many shops use ruby now, but nobody really talks how they're "using" ruby because it isn't cool anymore. Kinda like in the 2000's when everyone was talking about how they were using Java and VCs would throw money in their face. It's rare to see a company these days to evangelize their use of Java. These days people prefer talking about how they're using node.js or Go.

codewright 14y ago
There are secret weapons other than Node.js or Go, which don't necessarily make you more productive like moving from Java to Ruby.

up_and_up 14y ago

Any details or evidence to back this up? I see more and more job opps for people with Ruby skills: startups, BigCos, Gov, nonprofits, I know longtime java shops that are rewriting their apps in Ruby. I have worked with Ruby professionally for 5 years. From my perspective there is more opportunity now then years back, more high quality code being written, more problems can be solved in less time, etc This is still a very exciting place to be. I have found being good at Ruby has provided the highest ROI of my career.

petercooper 14y ago

It's still in heavy use. I think it has plateaued compared to some other technologies but it isn't declining at least. I say this as a publisher with fingers in the Ruby, JavaScript, and HTML5 pies (the latter two are growing more quickly but Ruby is far from dipping).

davesims 14y ago

Man, my anecdotal evidence is completely opposite, and I've been comparing notes with (some good) recruiters and other contacts around town for the last couple of years. Rails hit an inflection point in that period where even enterprises are comfortable with it. In DFW, traditionally a dense forest of Enterprisey .NET and J2EE projects, I've seen a LOT of new Rails gigs pop up. A number of startups (growing in this area), but also big companies like Raytheon. I had a long conversation with an Adobe recruiter last year about their Rails initiative, and unless someone can point me towards different information, is it not the case that most web startups default question now is -- "is there a good reason NOT to do this in Rails?" Rails and Ruby right now feel like Java circa the early 00s or thereabouts, where JVM performance concerns/FUD had clearly been dealt with and pretty much everyone was on board. My hunch is we may look back on the last couple of years as being a similar tipping point for Ruby/Rails.

thibaut_barrere 14y ago

I never got so many dev and CTO gigs/jobs proposals that now, and this for very different companies (startups, more classic companies etc).

dasil003 14y ago

If by world you mean trend-driven web dev blogosphere then yes, however that's sort of a risky thing to use as your sole input to reality.

xutopia 14y ago

I'm seeing settling happening (we don't need to build as many basic libraries as when rails was still in its infancy) but number of ruby users is growing steadily.

meskyanichi 14y ago

Ruby/Rails has practically become the poster child for every (modern) web hosting company. EngineYard, Heroku, DotCloud, ShellyCloud, 6Sync, Webbynode, Linode, Brightbox, and the list goes on. Let's not forget the advancement of JRuby (JVM Ruby), Rubinius (LLVM Ruby), MacRuby (For Native OSX Desktop Apps), RubyMotion (For Native iOS Apps), mRuby (For Embedded Apps). Not to mention the truck load of conferences every year, the new and existing, accessible and easy-to-use open source projects that are being released and updated frequently. "Is it just me or has the world moved on from Ruby?".sub("from", "to") We're doing our best. :)