Is Ruby Dying?

New submitter John Moses writes "I have been working with node.js a lot lately, and have been discussing with co-workers if node.js is taking steam away from Ruby at all. I think the popularity of the language is an important talking point when selecting a language and framework for a new project. A graph on the release date of gems over time could help determine an answer. The front page of RubyGems only shows data on the most popular, but I am really interested in seeing recent activity. My theory is that if developers' contributions to different gems is slowing down, then so is the popularity of the language."

Comments

Short answer: no

[gentryx]

Long answer: a better indicator is how many Google queries for the respective languages are issued. And those suggest that Ruby is standing stronger than ever. Ruby is more than just Rails. And just because there is yet another web apps framework, it doesn't mean that the other ones automatically lose traction.

Re:Short answer: no

[Tumbleweed]

Look at that UID. You must be like, 35! Yuck, old people!

Careful there, kid. :)

Re:Short answer: no

[shutdown -p now]

the compiler is free to rearrange the order of the fields as it sees fit.

No, it is not. ISO/IEC 9899:1999, 6.7.2.1 "Structure and union specifiers", paragraph 13:

"Within a structure object, the non-bit-field members and the units in which bit-fields reside have addresses that increase in the order in which they are declared. A pointer to a structure object, suitably converted, points to its initial member (or if that member is a bit-field, then to the unit in which it resides), and vice versa. There may be unnamed padding within a structure object, but not at its beginning."

The C++ standard has a similar provision. What's unspecified is whether there is any padding between the fields.

Netcraft Confirms It

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Ruby is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Ruby community when IDC confirmed that Ruby market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all languages. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Ruby has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Ruby is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent programmers survey.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Ruby's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Ruby faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Ruby because Ruby is dying. Things are looking very bad for Ruby. As many of us are already aware, Ruby continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

But Node.JS IS WEBSCALE

[Billly Gates]

Node.js invents threading/processes and is webscale.

The best part is once you start coding it you will find yourself with a neat trimmed beard in designer plaid in a hip coffee shop listening to music not even out yet with 2 georgous ladies by your side giggling and being turned on by your most awesome code that is on your laptop screen.

Wrong. We in industry are very upset with Ruby.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of us in industry are very fed up with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, but I think it's much more because of their communities than it is because of the technologies themselves.

I don't know if there's a polite way of saying this, but far too many of the people involved with those communities are utter disasters who in turn create utterly disastrous software systems. For every Ruby success story we may hear about, there are probably 10 or 20 total disasters that aren't as widely known. The disasters are usually because of the people involved, not the technologies.

Those of us who've been in the industry for many years, if not decades, and have had to engage in hiring over the past 8 or so years will know what I'm talking about. We have to deal with candidates who have no formal education at all in computer science, software engineering, or a related field. They don't even have the equivalent of a single four-month community college programming course. If we're lucky, they've read a single book about web development using Ruby on Rails. (This is ignoring their other serious flaws, such as the complete inability to dress or act with even a minimal level of professionalism; I've interviewed some of these hipsters while they're wearing t-shirts with dumbass sayings on them, and fedora hats.)

Now, having been in the industry for years, I can see right through these people. When they get past HR, they don't get past me. But I can't be everywhere. I've worked with a few organizations lately where the people making the hiring or purchasing decisions in the past didn't know better, and now these organizations have ended up with their very own Ruby on Rails disasters.

The Ruby community may not realize it, but they're getting a very bad reputation in the industry. It's nearly as bad as the reputation that the PHP and JavaScript communities have now. But this is exactly what's expected to happen when dealing with programmers who do shitty work in the first place, or who think it's perfectly normal to write unmaintainable code, or who think it's acceptable to job hop 3 or 4 times a year, or who can't work in a professional manner, or who deliver one under-performing and costly software disaster after another.

At more and more places, "Ruby" and "Ruby on Rails" are becoming synonyms for "costly disaster". That's not the kind of reputation that a programming language or a web framework can have if it wants to survive and flourish past the short term. Maybe the people in these communities don't realize it, but they're losing trust at an alarming pace.