Ask HN: Ruby or Python for 2018?
38 comments
Ruby, PHP, Go, Python, Javascript & Elixir developer here:
The #1 rule that trumps all, no matter how small or big your project: Use whatever facilitates your work.
Sometimes you need to get things done quickly, sometimes you need to hire a lot of people cheaply/easily, sometimes you need a project to scale. In each of these cases, you may want to use a different tool. For something that's your side project, you probably just want to be able to get work done effectively and enjoy what you're doing. Pick that tool that you most enjoy working with, in that case.
For me, I default to Ruby (and I haven't touched Rails for work in 2 years!). I find it to be a joy to work with. I expect that later, as a I grow as a developer, this will become Elixir and/or Erlang. Sometimes I have to work in Python, because that makes sense for the project. I find it a bit of a slog, but it gets the job done and lets me move on to other things.
If you are a developer learning the ropes, I couldn't recommend a better language than Ruby. Your skills will translate. You will find work. The places that hire junior developers that only care that you know their stack aren't worth your time.
Most of the people that have publicly roasted Rails were wrong, for one reason or another, by the way (especially that Twitter blog post...). Too often, people are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The best advice I can give you after that first rule is that you should ignore what people say and just get your work done. That's the thing that differentiates people who stay working in this field and those who don't.
The #1 rule that trumps all, no matter how small or big your project: Use whatever facilitates your work.
Sometimes you need to get things done quickly, sometimes you need to hire a lot of people cheaply/easily, sometimes you need a project to scale. In each of these cases, you may want to use a different tool. For something that's your side project, you probably just want to be able to get work done effectively and enjoy what you're doing. Pick that tool that you most enjoy working with, in that case.
For me, I default to Ruby (and I haven't touched Rails for work in 2 years!). I find it to be a joy to work with. I expect that later, as a I grow as a developer, this will become Elixir and/or Erlang. Sometimes I have to work in Python, because that makes sense for the project. I find it a bit of a slog, but it gets the job done and lets me move on to other things.
If you are a developer learning the ropes, I couldn't recommend a better language than Ruby. Your skills will translate. You will find work. The places that hire junior developers that only care that you know their stack aren't worth your time.
Most of the people that have publicly roasted Rails were wrong, for one reason or another, by the way (especially that Twitter blog post...). Too often, people are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The best advice I can give you after that first rule is that you should ignore what people say and just get your work done. That's the thing that differentiates people who stay working in this field and those who don't.
Python
Django, a highly competitive web framework. With great extensions like Django REST Framework. Assets with django-webpack-loader. So on. It may not be as good as Laravel or Rails, but they're all really active.
But the thing that makes Python best is the web framework is where it begins, not where it ends:
Want text analysis? NLTK or spaCy
Data? Pandas, numpy, pytables
Want more analysis? scikit-learn, tensorflow, theano.
Solid language standards? PEP8 and PEP257 makes most python code you see in open source very conformant
Test framework? pytest. And its plugins. tox for testing against a matrix of python versions/settings (kinda like Travis).
Handling environments + packages easily? pipenv
Multiple python versions? pyenv
Editor integration? Jedi + python-mode for VIM, VSCode, Atom, Python
Images / Graphics? pillow
Super-powered REPL? ptpython
Deployment? Fabric, Ansible, Saltstack
Documentation? Sphinx, Docutils
Want C/C++ integration/performance? pybind11, cython, CFFI, swig
Mobile dev? kivy (though I wouldn't say it's the best yet, when I tried it, setup was easier than react-native)
And that's just scratching the surface. Python has high quality, permissively-licensed libraries, with solid documentation. A lot of the plugins I mentioned above for handling data use C-level speedups. Of these, tensorflow, and Theano can use GPU speedups.
Rails is fantastic. I like guard and the asset pipeline. But I just learned to use GNU Make's "$ make -j task1 task2" and django-webpack-loader. I also hear good things about Laravel in PHP.
Django, a highly competitive web framework. With great extensions like Django REST Framework. Assets with django-webpack-loader. So on. It may not be as good as Laravel or Rails, but they're all really active.
But the thing that makes Python best is the web framework is where it begins, not where it ends:
Want text analysis? NLTK or spaCy
Data? Pandas, numpy, pytables
Want more analysis? scikit-learn, tensorflow, theano.
Solid language standards? PEP8 and PEP257 makes most python code you see in open source very conformant
Test framework? pytest. And its plugins. tox for testing against a matrix of python versions/settings (kinda like Travis).
Handling environments + packages easily? pipenv
Multiple python versions? pyenv
Editor integration? Jedi + python-mode for VIM, VSCode, Atom, Python
Images / Graphics? pillow
Super-powered REPL? ptpython
Deployment? Fabric, Ansible, Saltstack
Documentation? Sphinx, Docutils
Want C/C++ integration/performance? pybind11, cython, CFFI, swig
Mobile dev? kivy (though I wouldn't say it's the best yet, when I tried it, setup was easier than react-native)
And that's just scratching the surface. Python has high quality, permissively-licensed libraries, with solid documentation. A lot of the plugins I mentioned above for handling data use C-level speedups. Of these, tensorflow, and Theano can use GPU speedups.
Rails is fantastic. I like guard and the asset pipeline. But I just learned to use GNU Make's "$ make -j task1 task2" and django-webpack-loader. I also hear good things about Laravel in PHP.
+1
with so many supported libraries available i keep finding that adding more functions to Python code does not actually add much to the amount of code.
with so many supported libraries available i keep finding that adding more functions to Python code does not actually add much to the amount of code.
You seem overly concerned with Hype Driven Development.
There's not a lot of new stuff coming out of these frameworks because of how mature they are.
Both languages/frameworks are comparable. Your end product will not be very different regardless which route you take. Both languages and frameworks will be maintained 10 years from now. The job market for both will exist 5+ years from now.
Pick one you like and get to work!
There's not a lot of new stuff coming out of these frameworks because of how mature they are.
Both languages/frameworks are comparable. Your end product will not be very different regardless which route you take. Both languages and frameworks will be maintained 10 years from now. The job market for both will exist 5+ years from now.
Pick one you like and get to work!
Python is a good career move. Ruby is more fun. There's no right answer :)
I program in Ruby right now for work but am comfortable switching to Python. There are plenty of Ruby positions available, we've hired 5 or so Junior Engineers out of Rails/JavaScript bootcamps. It's just that Python has the data science and machine learning positions in addition to web development.
I program in Ruby right now for work but am comfortable switching to Python. There are plenty of Ruby positions available, we've hired 5 or so Junior Engineers out of Rails/JavaScript bootcamps. It's just that Python has the data science and machine learning positions in addition to web development.
Have you looked at Elixir / Phoenix?
http://phoenixframework.org/
It has some Rails roots, so you might like it.
http://phoenixframework.org/
It has some Rails roots, so you might like it.
Elixir and Phoenix are amazing. I use them any chance I get. The problem now is that the ecosystem is still in early stages. You're gonna end up writing some more libraries whereas in an ecosystem like Ruby there are gonna be plenty of gems handling the typical things like Api wrappers.
I can't recall ever hearing anyone say they "hate Ruby".
Ruby is designed to make programmers happy.
Ruby and Rails are "boring" because they are mature and do their job extremely well, so the cutting-edge devs that helped get them there got bored and moved on to other newer ecosystems.
If you are more interested in getting the project done fast and efficiently and you don't mind doing it someone else's way, then RoR is a good choice.
If you like to do things your own way, then Rails will probably frustrate you because it is very opinionated on how things are done. You can override everything, but some people's personality is more suited for the node.js world that is far less of a framework and more of an ecosystem of libraries.
These are 2 popular posts that will help you figure out if RoR is a personality fit for you:
http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is-omakase.htm...
https://medium.com/@timbuchwaldt/rails-is-boring-thats-great...
Ruby is designed to make programmers happy.
Ruby and Rails are "boring" because they are mature and do their job extremely well, so the cutting-edge devs that helped get them there got bored and moved on to other newer ecosystems.
If you are more interested in getting the project done fast and efficiently and you don't mind doing it someone else's way, then RoR is a good choice.
If you like to do things your own way, then Rails will probably frustrate you because it is very opinionated on how things are done. You can override everything, but some people's personality is more suited for the node.js world that is far less of a framework and more of an ecosystem of libraries.
These are 2 popular posts that will help you figure out if RoR is a personality fit for you:
http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is-omakase.htm...
https://medium.com/@timbuchwaldt/rails-is-boring-thats-great...
I agree, it's more I hate x gem, or the community as a whole. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157886
There are 2 choices of language for any side project.
1) the language you know best
2) the language you most want to learn
Only you can decide on which has a higher priority.
1) the language you know best
2) the language you most want to learn
Only you can decide on which has a higher priority.
This. If it’s a side project that is intended for self-development and learning, try it in a new language and see how you get on. If it’s something even remotely important or think might turn into more than just a side-project, go with what you know or are comfortable with.
I have almost come to regret learning Ruby because it is a beautiful language that I wish it would be my main language but unfortunately I think it has lost scripting language race by the look of its popularity among competitors.
Part of the reason I suspect is the development cultural difference brought by language barriers. Without sound development, it surely will struggle to become better than alternatives.
https://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/4570470
Part of the reason I suspect is the development cultural difference brought by language barriers. Without sound development, it surely will struggle to become better than alternatives.
https://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/4570470
I feel your pain. Beautiful language with no real peers in that regard, as far as I can see.
For what it is worth, I think you will probably learn something from trying Ruby, even if you wind up sticking with Python. The community and language design are just very different from Python's: MINSWAN v BDFL, many ways versus Pythonic PEP's, everything is an object versus some things are objects, etc.
All this with the caveats that: I think both languages have advantages and disadvantages and I think knowing more languages is better than knowing fewer or one.
All this with the caveats that: I think both languages have advantages and disadvantages and I think knowing more languages is better than knowing fewer or one.
If you are going to learn something different, learn something really different, not another dynamic unix scripting language.
There are languages I find more interesting than Ruby. Suggesting them however would have required deliberately misreading or ignoring the actual question. Ruby was on the table and in use. The alternative? A regression to Python. At least as much encouragement as advice.
Programming languages are just tools. People that are finding they are productive with a language/tool are out building things and not complaining.
I'm personally not someone that likes to look at new languages and compare them for the sake of it. There are folks that like to compare compilers or interpreters and the internals of how those work and debate them.
I'm more interested if something new can help me in delivery of working software. Having moved from a Java world to Ruby/Rails, I find it not just helps me deliver, it pretty much gets out of my way (most of the time) compared to Java.
I haven't done much more than read about Python/Django/Flask. If they are mostly similar to Ruby/Rails it doesn't sound like there would be benefit to learning them outside of curiosity (and an affinity to Monty Python).
I suspect that big name bloggers and people that talk a lot about things may find a need to keep viewers coming to their blogs/channels. If there isn't a lot of new stuff to write about but it is still a solid delivery platform, that isn't too exciting to draw viewers.
I'm personally not someone that likes to look at new languages and compare them for the sake of it. There are folks that like to compare compilers or interpreters and the internals of how those work and debate them.
I'm more interested if something new can help me in delivery of working software. Having moved from a Java world to Ruby/Rails, I find it not just helps me deliver, it pretty much gets out of my way (most of the time) compared to Java.
I haven't done much more than read about Python/Django/Flask. If they are mostly similar to Ruby/Rails it doesn't sound like there would be benefit to learning them outside of curiosity (and an affinity to Monty Python).
I suspect that big name bloggers and people that talk a lot about things may find a need to keep viewers coming to their blogs/channels. If there isn't a lot of new stuff to write about but it is still a solid delivery platform, that isn't too exciting to draw viewers.
I would take a look at Laravel which is php on rails with less magic and more built in features such as authentication and background jobs. The most important thing is that its community is growing rapidly and it has a BDFL ala DHH in Taylor's Orwell. Also there are really good fresh resources such as latacasts Codecourse and the Laracon conferences
I still like php for web development, although it seems to be falling out of favor somewhat. The new version 7 is quite fast, and its quick to get up and running. I've not used Laravel, (I use a lighter framework called Silex) but it is PHP's version of Rails.
I've found php is somewhat slightly more verbose and fewer data structures seems to make php code easier to maintain for other people than perl and java (which I also maintain...).
I've found php is somewhat slightly more verbose and fewer data structures seems to make php code easier to maintain for other people than perl and java (which I also maintain...).
Having had to learn PHP to work on some WordPress stuff, I can honestly say that I find PHP 5.6 and onward to be a competent, usable language. It has its quirks, but so does JavaScript. In fact, I'd say PHP and JavaScript are now close cousins. The array methods are a bit annoying, but you can definitely write effective, clean code in modern PHP.
Ruby’s beautiful object model alone is worth learning. “Metaprogramming Ruby”[0] is a great introduction to that. Its flexibility is what makes things like DSLs so easy. The language also includes functional programming influences. I wrote Django apps in Python for the better part of two years, and for what anecdotes are worth, I didn’t learn nearly as much as I did writing Rails applications in Ruby. I’d pick Ruby every time.
[0] https://pragprog.com/book/ppmetr/metaprogramming-ruby
[0] https://pragprog.com/book/ppmetr/metaprogramming-ruby
If you're already comfortable in Python, don't bother with Ruby. You won't find anything new there, and a lot of frustrating language design errors. I've written about this in more detail at http://madhadron.com/posts/2013-02-25-a-criticism-of-ruby.ht....
I love Ruby, but Python is super simple to learn. I haven't spent enough time with Python to do anything super cool with it, but it does seem to be more consistent in terms of the code you will read.
I also think that once you learn Python, a lot of other languages' syntax (such as Go and C# for me) becomes more approachable.
I also think that once you learn Python, a lot of other languages' syntax (such as Go and C# for me) becomes more approachable.
> Rails is awesome but people hate Ruby
Is this sentiment common? It might be just my personal echo chamber but I've often heard the opposite stance, i.e. people saying they hate Rails because of all the "magic" but at the same time they like Ruby as a language because of its flexibility.
Is this sentiment common? It might be just my personal echo chamber but I've often heard the opposite stance, i.e. people saying they hate Rails because of all the "magic" but at the same time they like Ruby as a language because of its flexibility.
The Ruby job market outside of Rails is tiny, unfortunately. Most folks never bothered to look. DevOps and InfoSec folks tend to know better -- Chef, Puppet, Capistrano, Vagrant, Logstash, Metasploit, Homebrew, Sass... all written in Ruby)
All of my ETL pipelines are built in Ruby and I wouldn't have it another way. From a development, support and deployment persective, Jekyll is hands-down the best "web framework" I've ever worked with. If you need to build websites that don't need sessions/accounts, there isn't a better tool. NGINX's SSI module fills in some (tiny) gaps.
Ruby's a great language with a healthy set of tools. It's just not popular among people making CRUD apps right now.
To most folks though, unless they're already Ruby developers (AND not a Rails shop), Ruby and Rails might as well be the same thing.
All of my ETL pipelines are built in Ruby and I wouldn't have it another way. From a development, support and deployment persective, Jekyll is hands-down the best "web framework" I've ever worked with. If you need to build websites that don't need sessions/accounts, there isn't a better tool. NGINX's SSI module fills in some (tiny) gaps.
Ruby's a great language with a healthy set of tools. It's just not popular among people making CRUD apps right now.
To most folks though, unless they're already Ruby developers (AND not a Rails shop), Ruby and Rails might as well be the same thing.
we use Sinatra and sequel for a few apps and it's great (and puma to run it all)
we have switched to python for our FaaS but only because of lack of Ruby support from AWS lambda.
we have switched to python for our FaaS but only because of lack of Ruby support from AWS lambda.
I understand your concerns about Django and Flask... as someone who doesn't work with either on a regular basis, getting reacquainted with Django feels very heavy... and Flask seems too minimal.
Anyway, I just started using CherryPy for a new project and would like to recommend it. I had actually used it around 10 years ago and hadn't given it much thought until recently, but it's quite simple and nice for REST APIs.
Anyway, I just started using CherryPy for a new project and would like to recommend it. I had actually used it around 10 years ago and hadn't given it much thought until recently, but it's quite simple and nice for REST APIs.
I would say try out both and use the one that makes you happy and is the best tool for the job.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Rails and Flask and use both on a regular basis.
You may also want to give this a read:
https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/it-doesnt-matter-what-web-fra...
Personally, I'm a big fan of Rails and Flask and use both on a regular basis.
You may also want to give this a read:
https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/it-doesnt-matter-what-web-fra...
i have a simple suggestion, you should learn both, we live in a polyglot world now, you need to be able to learn multiple languages and to do so quickly. i started with php then moved to python/tornado/sqlalchemy, ror, ruby/sinatra/activerecord, nodejs/expressjs, and lately golang/gorilla mux/database/sql. just start with one, suggest ror, i’m sure you’ll have multiple projects in the future. ruby was built for web app development, django’s a bolt on for python that then added web functionality. dont worry about the community issues, ror has enough great libraries out there that you could put together a pretty slick website quickly. a side note, if you need to use some scientific packages, python might be better supported like numpy etc. fyi ruby language is much nicer than python imho (insert flame war). dont dwell on this decision too long, either should be able to get you what you want which is a slick website, get a move on it
It's your side project, do whatever you want!
You said ruby is fun for you then go with it.
If you code alone, use the best available which generally I assume people would say Ruby.
If you are intending to collaborate then python might be a better choice as its more popular.
Just a different take. Either one is great.
If you are intending to collaborate then python might be a better choice as its more popular.
Just a different take. Either one is great.
I used to hate Ruby until I had to learn it two years ago. Now, I wish that this is the only language I'd ever need to use. It's beautiful, and testing stuff with it is a BREEZE.
Python’s more broadly applicable, easier to read and maintain, installed by default on distributions. Pyramid is another good option if you have something against Django.
I would prefer to pursue Python further for data scraping/analysis or bot development related things, PHP for Web apps and Go just for heck of it :>
Recently someone asked what worries you about future of Ruby on reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/7jiq6k/what_worries_y...
I will post my answer here, but it basically sums up a lot of things that were said in the replies here as well. If you want to be happy, just use what you are happy with, if you want a career out of it, choose sensibly.
We need to define a few things up front.
When people say Ruby is dying or dead, what dying or dead actually means is Ruby is not growing. Lot of people left Ruby, even the prominent ones, but there are also lots of new faces, as DHH likes to mention.
Languages dont die, especially when they are open sourced. Perl is still not dead, nor PHP. But consider if a languages is slowly moving towards irrelevant, then it is certainly considered dead. In this case Perl is an example, while PHP still has vast majority of the Web programming. In any case, the Job Pool is an easy indication, and no matter how you spin it, the Job Pool for Ruby Rails is definitely shrinking.
The problem is Ruby at its 1-2% low level of usage, should really be growing a lot. You dont see large web scale company using it, Python has Google, Dropbox, for example, using it as well as contributing to its development. Ruby doesn't have any of that, and it isn;t trying to get being used for large corporate either. Its whole ecosystem is bond to Rails. Even the Release note of Ruby often mention Rails and nothing else. It seems at the moment Ruby is an Rails languages rather then vice versa.
When people say Ruby Rails dont scale, what they really meant was Ruby Rails dont scale cheaply compared to all others. Cookpad does close to 20,000 RPS, Shopify manage 80,000 RPS, and there were once information about China's Railway ticketing system using Rails that does 400,000+ RPS, it was basically the whole China DDOSing the system. So Ruby Rails scales, but at what cost?
The Web is largely divided into two camp, one is the pay by user and SaaS model, much like Basecamp which Rails originate from, the other is Ads to user which needs to reach a critical mass before it starts to paid itself. The latter is the one much more popular and which Ruby Rails is having problem, because scaling to that critical mass requires substantial investment into infrastructure, and its cost structure is not very attractive. DHH used to say Moores law is helping them to grow, but that has no longer be true for recent few years, not to mention the Goal post of sustainable advert or per user revenue on a freemium model is getting larger then the speed of Hardware improvement. For example, on Stackoverflow Engineering blog, shows a fully optimize ASP.NET could do 10x more then Ruby at 10x Faster Speed while using 1/10 of Servers.
There was a talk sometime ago about Go Vs Ruby, where Ruby was likely 30%+ more productive up front, it was 10x slower, 300% more maintenance work afterwards.
To put this simply, the maths and scale of economy doesn't work very well for Ruby And Rails on many applications.
If you watched some Conf Video, Matz has went from Ruby is fast enough, good enough, to Ruby needs to be faster, Ruby needs concurrency. From Ruby is my languages, to Ruby is communities languages. The closed development circle of Ruby means it has seen much less contribution from outsider compared to Python. When Ruby needs all the help it gets, not having the conversation and development in open and easy to follow doesn't really help. Although I understand the resistance to GitHub, but certainly GitLab is an alternative.
I also dont believe backward compatibility is the most important factor for 3.0. Ruby has quirks and in some cases far too many choices, and if MJIT is really faster, it should be used as an incentive to move the ecosystem forward. Making breaking changes at the MJIT support level. Taking the chance at changes to fix and improve things. While Matz have said they dont want another Perl 5 / 6 and Python 2 / 3 problem, but i believe this is different. Perl 5 / 6 is literally a completely different languages they might as well call Perl 6 something else. While Python 3 offer changes while giving no immediate benefits to its users. JIT is a very good chance to use as bait and rethink what Ruby in the future should be.
The biggest problem often is Ruby as a communities dont see any of these as problem until it is too late. People flock to Go not only because of its performance, but because it can be easily deployed, and deployment isn't something even on Ruby's Roadmap. Ruby on Windows still isn't as easy as any other counterparts. And it is too late to join the Data Science race. Sidekiq developers gained their success using Ruby has has now moved to Go, the same as Hashicorp.
I know this may be a little harsh, of course Ruby dont owe us anything, you are free to use and move on as you like, but it is sad that Ruby doesn't grow bigger, it doesn't need to take over the world, but it should have a slightly larger presence and usage across different domain. Luckily Ruby will always live on in the form of Elixir and Crystal.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/7jiq6k/what_worries_y...
I will post my answer here, but it basically sums up a lot of things that were said in the replies here as well. If you want to be happy, just use what you are happy with, if you want a career out of it, choose sensibly.
We need to define a few things up front.
When people say Ruby is dying or dead, what dying or dead actually means is Ruby is not growing. Lot of people left Ruby, even the prominent ones, but there are also lots of new faces, as DHH likes to mention.
Languages dont die, especially when they are open sourced. Perl is still not dead, nor PHP. But consider if a languages is slowly moving towards irrelevant, then it is certainly considered dead. In this case Perl is an example, while PHP still has vast majority of the Web programming. In any case, the Job Pool is an easy indication, and no matter how you spin it, the Job Pool for Ruby Rails is definitely shrinking.
The problem is Ruby at its 1-2% low level of usage, should really be growing a lot. You dont see large web scale company using it, Python has Google, Dropbox, for example, using it as well as contributing to its development. Ruby doesn't have any of that, and it isn;t trying to get being used for large corporate either. Its whole ecosystem is bond to Rails. Even the Release note of Ruby often mention Rails and nothing else. It seems at the moment Ruby is an Rails languages rather then vice versa.
When people say Ruby Rails dont scale, what they really meant was Ruby Rails dont scale cheaply compared to all others. Cookpad does close to 20,000 RPS, Shopify manage 80,000 RPS, and there were once information about China's Railway ticketing system using Rails that does 400,000+ RPS, it was basically the whole China DDOSing the system. So Ruby Rails scales, but at what cost?
The Web is largely divided into two camp, one is the pay by user and SaaS model, much like Basecamp which Rails originate from, the other is Ads to user which needs to reach a critical mass before it starts to paid itself. The latter is the one much more popular and which Ruby Rails is having problem, because scaling to that critical mass requires substantial investment into infrastructure, and its cost structure is not very attractive. DHH used to say Moores law is helping them to grow, but that has no longer be true for recent few years, not to mention the Goal post of sustainable advert or per user revenue on a freemium model is getting larger then the speed of Hardware improvement. For example, on Stackoverflow Engineering blog, shows a fully optimize ASP.NET could do 10x more then Ruby at 10x Faster Speed while using 1/10 of Servers.
There was a talk sometime ago about Go Vs Ruby, where Ruby was likely 30%+ more productive up front, it was 10x slower, 300% more maintenance work afterwards.
To put this simply, the maths and scale of economy doesn't work very well for Ruby And Rails on many applications.
If you watched some Conf Video, Matz has went from Ruby is fast enough, good enough, to Ruby needs to be faster, Ruby needs concurrency. From Ruby is my languages, to Ruby is communities languages. The closed development circle of Ruby means it has seen much less contribution from outsider compared to Python. When Ruby needs all the help it gets, not having the conversation and development in open and easy to follow doesn't really help. Although I understand the resistance to GitHub, but certainly GitLab is an alternative.
I also dont believe backward compatibility is the most important factor for 3.0. Ruby has quirks and in some cases far too many choices, and if MJIT is really faster, it should be used as an incentive to move the ecosystem forward. Making breaking changes at the MJIT support level. Taking the chance at changes to fix and improve things. While Matz have said they dont want another Perl 5 / 6 and Python 2 / 3 problem, but i believe this is different. Perl 5 / 6 is literally a completely different languages they might as well call Perl 6 something else. While Python 3 offer changes while giving no immediate benefits to its users. JIT is a very good chance to use as bait and rethink what Ruby in the future should be.
The biggest problem often is Ruby as a communities dont see any of these as problem until it is too late. People flock to Go not only because of its performance, but because it can be easily deployed, and deployment isn't something even on Ruby's Roadmap. Ruby on Windows still isn't as easy as any other counterparts. And it is too late to join the Data Science race. Sidekiq developers gained their success using Ruby has has now moved to Go, the same as Hashicorp.
I know this may be a little harsh, of course Ruby dont owe us anything, you are free to use and move on as you like, but it is sad that Ruby doesn't grow bigger, it doesn't need to take over the world, but it should have a slightly larger presence and usage across different domain. Luckily Ruby will always live on in the form of Elixir and Crystal.
dang, i feel like i could read you talking about the state of programming all day. so, can i ask, what is your current language/framework of choice and what would you recommend to someone in my position (just starting out, interest mainly in working on personal project that could eventually become saas products and only interested in web application development)? do you have any words of wisdom on python?
Stick to Ruby, Matz will give us new Ruby this christmas, and he's the best mormon I have ever seen so that's a plus.
Clearly the Ruby community is experiencing some kind of event where the numbers are shrinking and some of the more prolific bloggers/contributors are talking trash and moving on and i'm not sure what to make of this. There is alot of tutorials and information already out there but it's getting dated and i'm not sure how much of it that was written in several-versions-old Rails will still apply and there's not ton of new stuff coming out. There seems to be a gem or tutorial for anything I could need to do but it's growing more stale by the day as their creators seem to be off to greener pastures.
Python has it's moments for me but after doing some tutorials I'm really finding Ruby/Rails to be just fun and exciting to use. I like how thorough the framework is and the development experience in general, with console commands for everything and automated tests re-running on save, and it seems they are adding greatly to the rails core, as opposed to Django's big 2.0 feature was basically copying Flask's URL system. I also like the community having a vocal figure like DHH kind of "leading the pack" with alot of methodology I agree with.
Is ruby really as bad as people say and is on it's way out? Is leaving Python for it, if my only interest is web-application development, a dumb idea? it seems like i'm standing at this cross-roads looking out and seeing on one side, Rails is awesome but people hate Ruby, and the other side is people love Python but Django is a big limp dick and I don't have time to program the kitchen sink with Flask. choosing between either is very confusing...