Is Ruby worth learning in 2019?
A subscriber asked me this, and it's a great question for numerous reasons. Firstly, some bootcamps still teach it, despite its decreasing adoption rates in enterprise development settings.
Secondly, Ruby on Rails (RoR) is one of the earliest backend web frameworks to hit the scene in late 2005. Despite its OG status, it seems to be falling off the popularity chart. Does that mean you should avoid it, along with the language that was used to build the framework?
Is it a bad career investment if you dedicate all your time and money to learning this language along with RoR?
Top comments (33)
Github, Apple.com, Shopify all use Ruby. I am currently employed as a Ruby developer. It happens to be a great language for learners. In general, use whatever language brings you joy and gets you a paid gig, which both happen for me.
isrubydead.com
LOL!
I think Ruby is possibly the best language for learning Object Oriented Programming and therefore will be worth learning for a very long time.
Not to mention seniority in Ruby is very valuable; there is a lot of legacy Ruby code. That legacy code isn't going anywhere either, so that means long-term demand.
The COBOL argument! =)
My mother and stepfather are recently-retired COBOL programmers. That language kept me fed, housed, and clothed for years, so despite whatever personal revulsion I feel whenever I see any COBOL code, I have to appreciate it. :)
No. The COBOL argument is that it is too risky and expensive to replace it.
This could be at most "The Java argument" - there is a lot of java out there and that code ain't gonna disappear in the next 20 years. I'd say Ruby is not yet at that level.. but might come to that.
It's the COBOL argument from the standpoint of "why should I learn ? Because there's going to be money to be made babysitting old code for the next decades."
I coded web apps using php/laravel and some todo and blog apps using django . Now using ruby and rails from last three months and i can say that ruby itself very elegant and really make a programmer happy ,#ruby care about the #human #factor in #coding which other languages lack.
Rails is awesome, when it come to #productivity no other framework can beat it .That's why startups and enterprises used it for MVP development .
Github , gitlab ,shopify, airbnb are the example that rails apps can be scalable.
Students studying in universities not had a clue about what ruby and rails can bring to them .
There is lot of negative reports over internet about ruby and rails but i want to add that ruby and rails is loved among startups and web development comapnies .
I'd throw in ColdFusion as a challenger! :D
But I am sure Andrian coldFusion doesn't have active records . I read about coldFusion its really fast and really impress how it work with java .Its rapid but still I think ruby (and rails) is more readable and elegant :). You work with coldFusion?
I got my first Ruby/RoR job in the fall of 2018. It's certainly possible to find good work with Ruby today. If you want to talk longer term, that's harder to predict. Who could have imagined ten years ago the number to js developers today?
I guess Ruby will have second wave of popularity after type checker will be added. A lot of things that Ruby did in the past was copied by other languages, because Ruby community tends to invent elegant solutions (Bundler, RoR, ActiveRecord, Sass, etc.)
Ruby is on the demand, but less popular because other languages drive away popularity from it, for example Elixir, JS+React+GraphQL, etc.
I'd say definitely yes, Ruby/Rails are a joy to work with and still one of the best tools to build web apps. For a new project I had a discussion with my client recently, and we ended up with PHP/Laravel rather than Rails because he's more familiar with PHP - but even then I benefit from my Rails knowledge because Laravel was so heavily inspired by it. Anyway, I believe it's good for any (senior) web dev to have more than one tool within their arsenal and for me Ruby/Rails should absolutely be there!
Nope. If you know, that's great, but its popularity goes down. RoR thing is still popular, but mostly in US and not as before.
Python beats it.
Who knows it will continue to do some things, but mostly it'll join PHP in the journey to the next world, where they join Pascal, Cobol and other ancestors.
Worth learning Python (if you by some reason still don't know it), Node.js, Go.
They said that about VB.NET...
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: YEEEEEESSSSSSS
Ruby if anything else is major fun to play with. I never had so much satisfation writing code with such expressiveness. The ideas flow from your mind to your IDE really fast...
Also when you learn Ruby you become pretty much ready to jump to Elixir world.
And finally if you know Ruby you are very near to enjoy the amazing Crystal language ecosystem. Your ruby code (after some changes) will be just blazing fast!...
IMO Crystal will be a big thing in the future, so i think it's not a waste of time to learn Ruby today...
This is where I am...I discovered two really amazing blogs that convinced me to experiment with Elixir and Rust. Unfortunately it looks like Raindrop.io is having an outage right now so I can't post the links. One of the bloggers was part of the Agile Manifesto writers and his experiences with how Agile was commercialized matched my viewpoint. He is a huge Elixir advocate now it reminds me of F#, which is always a good thing in my mind!
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