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.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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 </joke>
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 Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 1:24 PM, mark edwards <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
--
Tony Arcieri
i have two goals:
1) find a very productive language
2) 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.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
If this matters to you then Ruby probably isn't what you should be learning.
Henry
On 25/09/2013, at 8:24 AM, mark edwards <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
but i notice the latest Tiobe review does not look too favorable to
ruby's future.
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.
+"<language> programming" -- arrow symbols in the search string: you
learn something new every day around here !
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.
from what little i know about ruby, i sorta miss the semicolons !
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
You can use semicolons if you want!
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
if i am using semicolons and nobody else is, that's like showing up at
the toga party and i am the only one wearing a toga.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
ok i guess i can get used to not using the semicolons ! its just when
i first learned c, i was totally enamored with them.
former cobol'ers will no doubt remember using the period, but the rules
for when you used a period (and when you don't use it) were so bizarre
it just made the code unreadable. or if you did try to read it you got
a readers cramp because cobol was so long and wordy.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
If this is what you care about, Indeed is probably a better place to look
for statistics than Tiobe:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ruby+programming
On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 5:23 PM, mark edwards <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
2) learn a skill that will be valuable to a future employer.
--
Tony Arcieri
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.
On Sep 24, 2013, at 7:23 PM, mark edwards <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
i have two goals:
1) find a very productive language
2) 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.--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.
Some just adapt the world to suit their needs and desires 
We wouldn't be here if matz decided "I'll just use Perl"
Tamara Temple <tamouse.lists@gmail.com> 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.
i have two goals:
1) 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.
2) 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: zapparov@jabber.ru
*Origin: Happy Hacking!
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?
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.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.
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.
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...
+"<language> programming" -- arrow symbols in the search string: you
learn something new every day around here !
That <language> is just a placeholder. The query would be
+"ruby programming"
+"perl programming"
etc.
Kind regards
robert
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 4:32 PM, mark edwards <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/
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 la
nguage 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 15:58, Wayne Brisette wrote:
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
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.
We make everyone happy!
On Sep 25, 2013, at 5:09 PM, Joel Pearson <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
You can use semicolons if you want!