hello all - first time posting
i have been waiting to start in learning ruby-on-rails to determine its
popularity.
but i notice the latest Tiobe review does not look too favorable to
ruby’s future.
can anybody comment what is happening with ruby? i had thought ruby was
going to take over.
On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 1:24 PM, mark edwards [email protected]
wrote:
but i notice the latest Tiobe review does not look too favorable to
ruby’s future.
It is now official. Tiobe has confirmed: Ruby is dying
can anybody comment what is happening with ruby? i had thought ruby was
going to take over.
I don’t know of any Rubyists who ever felt “Ruby was going to take
over”.
However it remains in the Tiobe Top 20 at lucky #13. I don’t think
that’s
necessarily a bad place to be:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
On 25/09/2013, at 8:24 AM, mark edwards [email protected] wrote:
but i notice the latest Tiobe review does not look too favorable to
ruby’s future.
If this matters to you then Ruby probably isn’t what you should be
learning.
Henry
On Sep 24, 2013, at 7:23 PM, mark edwards [email protected] wrote:
fun language i have ever seen. its rails i had a bit of a struggle
learning, although this would be my first framework.–
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
If you base your choice on perceived popularity, then C or Java will
probably be your best bets.
If you base your choice on most likely future popular language,
JavaScript will be your best bet.
However, basing your skill set on a single language is a recipe for
disaster in your career. The most important aspect for a life-long
career in software development is adaptability and being able to look
ahead and see what is coming. Waiting to find the best language is
demonstrating the opposite of that skill.
i have two goals:
find a very productive language
learn a skill that will be valuable to a future employer.
my skill-set is looking more and more like a dead-technology junkyard,
and i wanted something that would be marketable in the future.
i have read through a ruby book and ruby certainly looks like the most
fun language i have ever seen. its rails i had a bit of a struggle
learning, although this would be my first framework.
i have two goals:
- find a very productive language
Any language that you know the best is more productive than any other.
So choose the one you really enjoy.
- learn a skill that will be valuable to a future employer.
Go with C / C++ / Java / Python / Ruby / Javascript
Any of the above will be valuable in the future depending on target
market
you are looking for (webdev / server / client etc)…
my skill-set is looking more and more like a dead-technology junkyard,
and i wanted something that would be marketable in the future.
Probably you should consider get skills of making good coffins. This
will
always be marketable for sure.
i have read through a ruby book and ruby certainly looks like the most
fun language i have ever seen. its rails i had a bit of a struggle
learning, although this would be my first framework.
I would suggest to not start learning with frameworks… Choose
something
more simple, get more familiar with Ruby, then go for Rails.
If you base your choice on perceived popularity, then C or Java will probably be
your best bets.
IMHO it depends on “popularity” criteria. Javascript (due to Node.JS)
is very popular these days.
But TIOBE rating is based not on popularity (in my way of
understanding of popularity).
If you base your choice on most likely future popular language, JavaScript will
be your best bet.
I doubt JS will be popular in a future, otherwise there would be no
such a lot of alternatives
that are compiled into JS (CoffeeScript and dozens of it’s derivatives
and such).
However, basing your skill set on a single language is a recipe for disaster in
your career…
+100
–
Sincerely yours,
Aleksey V. Zapparov A.K.A. ixti
FSF Member #7118
Mobile Phone: +34 677 990 688
Homepage: http://ixti.net/
JID: [email protected]
*Origin: Happy Hacking!
On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 5:23 PM, mark edwards [email protected]
wrote:
- learn a skill that will be valuable to a future employer.
If this is what you care about, Indeed is probably a better place to
look
for statistics than Tiobe:
disaster in your career. The most important aspect for a life-long
career in software development is adaptability and being able to look
ahead and see what is coming.
agreed. i had hoped that ruby is “what is coming”. i suppose i am
trying to determine where ruby is now and where it is heading. is it
gaining usage?
thanks for the indeed.com link. i have never seen that before.
i have worked a little with c, java but mostly perl & php. jScript is
something most developers are forced to spend time in, although i have
been using jQuery instead.
it was rather surprising to see ruby getting three down arrows on tiobe.
however, i saw COBOL (yes COBOL) getting five up arrows toward the
bottom of the page. for those of you who have not heard of COBOL, its
something your grandfather used to code in.
On Wed, 25 Sep 2013, mark edwards wrote:
however, i saw COBOL (yes COBOL) getting five up arrows toward the
bottom of the page. for those of you who have not heard of COBOL, its
something your grandfather used to code in.
It’s something that I used to code in, thankyouverymuch.
It was decades before other languages that dealt with decimal arithmatic
actually gained traction.
– Matt
It’s not what I know that counts.
It’s what I can remember in time to use.
The important aspect for life long career is not language.
It is what you do in the software industry. software industry is a big
industry.
Many subareas are different. You work for software product company,
software services company or you work in IT fields in one company or
organization,
whatever profit or non profit, it will determine your future.
Then is your technology depth which should be suitable for your
business.
This is my understanding.
Tamara T. [email protected] wrote:
The most important aspect for a life-long career in software
development is adaptability and being able to
look ahead and see what is coming.
Some just adapt the world to suit their needs and desires 
We wouldn’t be here if matz decided “I’ll just use Perl”
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 4:48 AM, mark edwards [email protected]
wrote:
it was rather surprising to see ruby getting three down arrows on tiobe.
however, i saw COBOL (yes COBOL) getting five up arrows toward the
bottom of the page. for those of you who have not heard of COBOL, its
something your grandfather used to code in.
Well, but did you look at how the index is calculated? Just an excerpt:
"The ratings are calculated by counting hits of the most popular
search engines. The search query that is used is
+“ programming”
This search query is executed for the top 150 websites of Alexa that
meet the following conditions:
There are more details at
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/tpci_definition.htm
So basically, figures are not about language usage, heck not even
about website mentions. They are just about search query hits of a
particular set of search engines. There are so many factors which
affect the rating that you need to take results with such big “grain”
of salt that you’ll probably die of dehydration before the information
is helpful for your decision.
If in need of a language with high probability of getting you a well
paid job then checking your favorite job portal might be a better
decision helper. But keep in mind that mediocre mastering of a
popular language you do not like might yield worse results than
mastery of a niche language which amazes you.
Kind regards
robert
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 4:32 PM, mark edwards [email protected]
wrote:
extraordinarily insightful comments, robert! thank you very much.
i especially like your note about a “niche language which amazes you”.
although i am seeing ruby less of a niche language and more of a glue
language. is there anything perl can do that ruby cannot do? i am
suspecting probably not.
Since both are Turing complete there is no difference in what both can
do. 
side-note - one has to wonder why would more people be supposedly
searching for COBOL.
I am not sure that conclusion is warranted. Granted, search frequency
will affect order of search results for some search engines but I
don’t think it does affect overall figures of hits reported.
but i suppose if vinyl recorded music could make a
comeback maybe COBOL can too. good thing i saved my cobol manuals.
Maybe vinyl records come back as storage medium - after the EMP
anyway…
+“ programming” – arrow symbols in the search string: you
learn something new every day around here !
That is just a placeholder. The query would be
+“ruby programming”
+“perl programming”
etc.
Kind regards
robert
I think Y2K was the height of COLBOL’s comeback. There were an awful lot
of companies looking for COLBOL programmers to help them fix their older
code.
is there anything perl can do that ruby cannot do? i am suspecting probably
not.
I think that needs to be asked another way, which is are there things
Ruby can do that Perl can’t. I never took to Perl like I have taken to
Ruby, so maybe I’m very biased. But while both languages I think are
fairly equal. The one are where Ruby stands out for me is readability.
I’ve looked at Perl code trying to figure out what the person who wrote
it was doing. Then gone back to them (sometimes it had been a while
since they had looked at the code) and asked what they were doing, and I
can’t tell you how many times they spent a good 10-15 minutes trying to
figure out what it was they were doing. Part of that is readability,
part is the lack of OOP, but it does make a point of where Ruby shines
over Perl. However, I myself have quickly written Ruby spaghetti code,
so it’s not just a language thing by itself.
Wayne
extraordinarily insightful comments, robert! thank you very much.
i especially like your note about a “niche language which amazes you”.
although i am seeing ruby less of a niche language and more of a glue
language. is there anything perl can do that ruby cannot do? i am
suspecting probably not.
side-note - one has to wonder why would more people be supposedly
searching for COBOL. but i suppose if vinyl recorded music could make a
comeback maybe COBOL can too. good thing i saved my cobol manuals.
+" programming" – arrow symbols in the search string: you
learn something new every day around here !
On Sep 24, 2013, at 9:59 PM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:
Tamara T. [email protected] wrote:
The most important aspect for a life-long career in software
development is adaptability and being able to
look ahead and see what is coming.Some just adapt the world to suit their needs and desires
We wouldn’t be here if matz decided “I’ll just use Perl”
Exactly. Well said.
EMP
the real reason i started this thread: there are a couple of training
‘boot-camp’ for RoR in san francisco. naturally they are sorta
expensive by my standards. so i am considering a multi-thousand $$$
investment into this.
ruby itself looks very straightforward, bur rails looks more
challenging.
before i spend big bucks getting a crash-course in this technology, i
wanted to get a sense of its value outside of my own project at hand.
perl: yes perl was pretty cool when it came out, but then again, so was
the disco ball. OOP and web interface was never really its strong
points.
cobol: (full disclosure) - i was a cobol guy for years and was paid
well, but hated the language. a half a line of ruby will do what it
took pages of cobol to do. cobol is more of a typing exercise, and will
quickly lead to carpel-tunnel syndrome.
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Tamara T. [email protected]
wrote:
Exactly. Well said.
It’s not one or the other. The tricky part is in determining when to
adapt yourself - and when to adapt the world. Extremes are always
easy.
Kind regards
robert
On 25/09/2013 15:58, Wayne B. wrote:
I think that needs to be asked another way, which is are there things Ruby can
do that Perl can’t. I never took to Perl like I have taken to Ruby, so maybe I’m
very biased. But while both languages I think are fairly equal. The one are where
Ruby stands out for me is readability. I’ve looked at Perl code trying to figure
out what the person who wrote it was doing. Then gone back to them (sometimes it
had been a while since they had looked at the code) and asked what they were
doing, and I can’t tell you how many times they spent a good 10-15 minutes trying
to figure out what it was they were doing. Part of that is readability, part is
the lack of OOP, but it does make a point of where Ruby shines over Perl. However,
I myself have quickly written Ruby spaghetti code, so it’s not just a language
thing by itself.
I’ve worked with Perl as my main language for the last 10 years and am
currently learning Ruby. Although I love the design of the language I
find the lack of code structures - @, $, %, {, ->, \ - difficult to
adjust to. It will probably become my main language eventually but at
present Ruby code, like Javascript, looks like sentences full of
barewords. That has me thinking - is “bareword” a Perlism?
One area where Ruby and Rails really shine in comparison with Perl is
outreach. There are so many amazing, well-designed Ruby and Rails sites
catering for all levels of ability, making the language very attractive
to newcomers. That matters to me, particularly if I’m considering
teaching it to new students. The diversity of publications is also
amazing, Pragmatic having excelled in particular. I raised this issue
recently on the London Perl Mongers list and was flamed in classic
comp.lang.perl fashion.
gvim
On 25/09/2013 16:59, mark edwards wrote:
perl: yes perl was pretty cool when it came out, but then again, so was
the disco ball. OOP and web interface was never really its strong
points.
Have you looked at Moose? It’s pretty amazing but TIMTOWTDI has resulted
in a proliferation of derivatives (Moo, Mouse, Mo etc.). Stevan Little
is now working on getting a meta object protocol (MOP) into the Perl 5
core so you never know, Perl 5 may soon have native OO after all these
years. This is where Ruby has the edge at present.
gvim
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