As a member of Python community, I hereby congratulate Ruby for joining the ranks of pretty-cool-but-not-so-hot-anymore technologies. There are years of Getting Stuff Done ahead of you. Way to go!
I think no longer being the "hotness" is, frankly, a blessing. Python appears to have thrived and has easily stomped Ruby when it comes to performing certain classes of Serious Work (TM), despite having been absolutely destroyed in the popularity contest war.
I personally like Ruby, and I always have. I'm excited to see how the community evolves over the coming years, even as I work with it less and less (professionally, I am switching to Python).
As member of the programming community, I hereby welcome Python and Ruby to the ranks of technologies that people uniquely associate their identity to!
every time I try to uniquely associate my identity with some technology or programming language, reality pulls the rug out from under me... i give up, perhaps it's time to invent my own in my zero minutes of spare time.
Has it really joined those ranks? Maybe in Jeff Atwood's bubble Ruby isn't the new hotness anymore but I'm still seeing everyone and their dog gush about how awesome they are for ditching their old and busted language for Ruby. To be clear, I'm not saying Atwood uniquely lives in a bubble, we all do, and I don't mean it in a bad way. Just that maybe the people he's talking to feel that way but it's been my observation that the larger developer community is still all about Ruby for coolness' sake.
Well, everyone is somewhere on the embrace-new-languages spectrum. It's clear that the people on the far edge of that spectrum have long moved on from Ruby. But there are still plenty of people further back. I'm sure we have years to come of stories of people switching to Ruby, just as we still see them with Python sometimes.
I wonder how you fall in to these categories, for instance, Ruby and PHP were developed around the same time (though Rails obviously came later) yet Ruby is such a "cooler language" so it can't be due simply to age.
I think a lot of it is Silicone Valley's attitude to being different to the rest of the world, the majority of sites are built in PHP? Sweet, let's go with something funky and different!
It's a great attitude to have for creating cool new things, I suppose, but it feels like it's moving too fast for me to keep up, is Node.js not cool anymore? What about Backbone? Lua? what the hell is Hadoop? How about a new Lisp?
I don't think it's "just" SV. On the whole, IME, Ruby (and Rails by immediate extension) appears to be a little more popular in the US than in Europe. I can't speak to other developer communities.
For instance, I was immediately struck upon visiting family in Norway that vanishingly few shops use Ruby, and surprisingly many use .NET. I had also just finished interviewing for an opportunity on mainland Europe for a shop that uses Perl as its production language.
>> I think a lot of it is Silicone Valley's attitude to being different to the rest of the world, the majority of sites are built in PHP? Sweet, let's go with something funky and different!
I don't think that's it. Personally, I switched from PHP to Ruby because 1) Ruby seemed like a great language and 2) I saw a lot of excitement about Rails and 3) it seemed like a marketable skill.
But a few people had to decide #1 for #2 and #3 to happen. I think any new technology gets its initial hype because of some merits it has, even if the hype later gets out of hand.
"It's a great attitude to have for creating cool new things, I suppose, but it feels like it's moving too fast for me to keep up, is Node.js not cool anymore? What about Backbone? Lua? what the hell is Hadoop? How about a new Lisp?"
As far as the last part is concerned, what about R7RS Small, and later R7RS Large?
diminish|13 years ago
estebank|13 years ago
shiftpgdn|13 years ago
doktrin|13 years ago
I personally like Ruby, and I always have. I'm excited to see how the community evolves over the coming years, even as I work with it less and less (professionally, I am switching to Python).
SkyMarshal|13 years ago
[1]: http://www.langpop.com/
skrebbel|13 years ago
parnas|13 years ago
bpatrianakos|13 years ago
Legion|13 years ago
shanelja|13 years ago
I think a lot of it is Silicone Valley's attitude to being different to the rest of the world, the majority of sites are built in PHP? Sweet, let's go with something funky and different!
It's a great attitude to have for creating cool new things, I suppose, but it feels like it's moving too fast for me to keep up, is Node.js not cool anymore? What about Backbone? Lua? what the hell is Hadoop? How about a new Lisp?
doktrin|13 years ago
For instance, I was immediately struck upon visiting family in Norway that vanishingly few shops use Ruby, and surprisingly many use .NET. I had also just finished interviewing for an opportunity on mainland Europe for a shop that uses Perl as its production language.
nathan_long|13 years ago
I don't think that's it. Personally, I switched from PHP to Ruby because 1) Ruby seemed like a great language and 2) I saw a lot of excitement about Rails and 3) it seemed like a marketable skill.
But a few people had to decide #1 for #2 and #3 to happen. I think any new technology gets its initial hype because of some merits it has, even if the hype later gets out of hand.
gngeal|13 years ago
As far as the last part is concerned, what about R7RS Small, and later R7RS Large?