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This is a good point. Ruby, and especially Ruby on Rails, did fall out of favor quite quickly. I think that many people and organizations regret falling for the hype. Ruby and Ruby on Rails both gained a pretty bad reputation for being slow and bloated, and software written using them was often found to be difficult to maintain. Dynamically typed scripting languages might work well for quickly throwing together a prototype, but they often aren't so good for writing large software systems that must be maintained for many years or even decades.

It is also important to note that some prominent members of the Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails communities jumped ship to Rust when it started to become obvious that the Ruby and Ruby on Rails hype was wearing very thin, and the Rust hype was just starting to build.

For example, look at the Rust Core Team. We see Yehuda Katz listed, who is apparently a former member of the Ruby on Rails Core Team. We also see Steve Klabnik listed. He apparently wrote a book about Ruby on Rails with Katz. Alex Crichton appears to maintain some Ruby gems.

So over 30% of Rust's Core Team was involved with Ruby at some point. It might even be more than that. This has made me very suspicious and weary of Rust. I personally have had bad experiences with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and I fear that I might be subjected to the same hype-driven nonsense if I get anywhere near Rust, due to the same people being involved with both.

Published packages ("gems") not signed. Huh?

Sadly being a PHP developer, I sit here in my chair and watch the Composer takeover and scream silently in my head.

Many "cool and new" technologies started out with a rather dismissive and arrogant attitude towards predecessors — only to then encounter the same problems as other did before and have to solve them in a hurry, shooting yourself in the same extremity (with the same gun), and stepping on the same rake.

From my experience, Ruby is especially bad at it. Release 1.9.2 not quite compatible with 1.9.1? What?!

Published packages ("gems") not signed. Huh?

So, when I hear about yet another problem in that world, all I can do is shrug...

They probably generate them with one of several available mission-critical enterprise-class web-scale Rubygems:

* https://rubygems.org/gems/bazaar
* https://github.com/usmanbashir/haikunator

(...though this is still my favourite...)

Version numbers just make too much sense and are too easily usable in software (e.g. $version >= 1510000). It's much more efficient to use random strings mandating a gigantic case block. Better write a Javascript framework that handles all this.

They probably generate them with one of several available mission-critical enterprise-class web-scale Rubygems:

* https://rubygems.org/gems/bazaar
* https://github.com/usmanbashir/haikunator

(...though this is still my favourite...)

Version numbers just make too much sense and are too easily usable in software (e.g. $version >= 1510000). It's much more efficient to use random strings mandating a gigantic case block. Better write a Javascript framework that handles all this.

Where's Tablizer?

Here? :-)

(sorry if this is double-posted - slashdot is choking)

Perl is way faster. Like twice as fast. Check out my test:
% time (echo | ruby)
( echo | ruby; ) 0.01s user 0.00s system 91% cpu 0.016 total
% time (echo | perl)
( echo | perl; ) 0.00s user 0.00s system 84% cpu 0.007 total

Though this is ruby 1.9.3. I don't think 2.0 is twice as fast as 1.9.3.

But I've looked at ruby syntax a bit and it looks like it might have the advantage perl has for quick ad hoc text parsing but an overall cleaner syntax.

What I don't care a lot about is fancy pants modules like rails. If I want to do something serious there's python.

If you're happy shredding text with perl, I see no reason to change. If you're happy doing serious work with python, I see no reason to change.

Ruby is a, dynamic, duck-type OO language with closures, exceptions, and a debugger.
It has nice library infrastructure: http://rubygems.org/
It is generally a little less popular than Python and Perl, depending on your yardstick: http://www.langpop.com/

There are a few implementations of ruby, including one in java (with great bridging to java classes), one for iOS (with great bridging to iOS libraries), and one based on .net (with great bindings there). So if you have a particular target platform, one of those may interest you.

But here's the cononical answer to your question:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PythonVsRuby

You might be interested in JRuby and Jython and their ability to communicate...

I code in Ruby for a living (Rails), and I think it's a really fun language. Which is something a fair number of rubyists say, and which is something you don't hear a lot of other folks say about their language of choice. For what that's worth...

Chrissake, this installation is a royal pain in the ass. The number of convoluted steps is just plain crazy.

First, I have to walk through a long, loooong installation instruction for Debian here. Then I turn to the Notes on installing and running, only to end halfway with a crazy error message.

diaspora@sirius:~/diaspora$ bundle install --without development test heroku
Fetching gem metadata from http://rubygems.org/......
Fetching gem metadata from http://rubygems.org/..
Fetching https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git
error: while accessing https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed
Git error: command `git clone 'https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git' "/home/diaspora/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@diaspora/cache/bundler/git/markerb-6697fe76410a3ed08ce3f5fd8ee64ebddd200665" --bare --no-hardlinks` in directory /home/diaspora/diaspora has failed.

Compiling Ruby from scratch, installing cruft in /usr/local, installing something weird called RVM.... What the fuck happened to ./configure && make && make install?

Chrissake, this installation is a royal pain in the ass. The number of convoluted steps is just plain crazy.

First, I have to walk through a long, loooong installation instruction for Debian here. Then I turn to the Notes on installing and running, only to end halfway with a crazy error message.

diaspora@sirius:~/diaspora$ bundle install --without development test heroku
Fetching gem metadata from http://rubygems.org/......
Fetching gem metadata from http://rubygems.org/..
Fetching https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git
error: while accessing https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed
Git error: command `git clone 'https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git' "/home/diaspora/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@diaspora/cache/bundler/git/markerb-6697fe76410a3ed08ce3f5fd8ee64ebddd200665" --bare --no-hardlinks` in directory /home/diaspora/diaspora has failed.

Compiling Ruby from scratch, installing cruft in /usr/local, installing something weird called RVM.... What the fuck happened to ./configure && make && make install?

Isn't RubyGems specifically for CPAN-like functionality? I realize it's nowhere near as mature as CPAN, but Ruby isn't as mature as Perl either, is it?

http://docs.rubygems.org/read/book/1

You should try Ruby Gems to solve your packaging woes. As for an IDE, there are plenty available: http://freeride.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl and http://www.mondrian-ide.com/ though I can't say much about them...

i recommend getting the 2nd edition of agile web development with rails.

here's how i did it on simply mepis... a debian distribution.

Ruby On Rails Install

1.Check to see if Ruby is installed. open shell and type "ruby -v". My result was "ruby 1.8.4", which is the latest version of Ruby.
2.libyaml-ruby and libzlib-ruby need to be installed on debian (in addition to its base Ruby install). install libzlib-ruby and not libzlib-ruby1.6. After all, you are running 1.8.x.
3.Go to http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/3 (rubygems is like apt for RoR).
4.Download rubygems-0.8.11.tgz here: http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126
5.right click, extract -> extract here (should extract to its own folder).
6.navigate to rubygems-0.8.11 diretory, switch to root and run ruby setup.rb.
7.Update system by typing: gem update -system
8.add export UBYOPT=rubygems to /etc/profiles
9.Synaptic irb.
10.Install PGSQL 8.1
11.Synaptic postgresql-8.1, libpgsql-ruby1.8 (pgsql adapter) and pgadmin3

btw, my php programming has improved by reading the agile web dev book. it is good - even if you don't end up going to it as a dev platform. if you are guru status, it won't be as helpful, but you could probably still pick up some good principles.

good luck.

If you want Ruby on Rails 1.1:

1. Check that you have the latest Ruby version (1.8.4) by running "ruby -v". If you do, go to step 2, if you don't upgrade your Ruby.
2. Check that you do have the Ruby Gems software. Just type "gem -v" in the CLI. If you don't have RubyGems then go get it
3. Once Gem is installed, just type "gem install rails --include-dependencies", this will install the latest version of Ruby on Rails and every package that's required by Rails (Rake, ActiveSupport, ActiveRecord, ActionPack, ActionMailer and ActionWebService). If you've ever used a Debian, think of "gem" as a Ruby-oriented version of apt-get.
4. You're done, start Railing away.