Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language
10 days ago
- #programming
- #ruby
- #web-development
- The concept of 'imprinting' in psychology can be applied to programming, where developers form strong attachments to their first programming language.
- Ruby is often credited with making programming intuitive for many, but the author disliked it upon late exposure, seeing its flaws clearly.
- Ruby was created in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz), known for its simple syntax and readability, resembling plain English.
- Ruby is dynamically typed, which can lead to errors only caught during runtime, unlike statically typed languages that prevent certain mistakes at compile time.
- Ruby's performance is slow compared to other major languages, exemplified by Twitter's migration from Ruby to Scala for better scalability.
- Ruby lacks a distinct niche as other languages like Python and JavaScript outperform it in various domains.
- Ruby's relevance persists mainly due to Ruby on Rails, a web framework that popularized Ruby in the early 2000s.
- Ruby on Rails was revolutionary for startups like Airbnb, GitHub, and Twitter, offering an integrated solution for web development.
- The author and others are bearish on Ruby, noting its declining popularity in developer surveys and its reliance on legacy systems and nostalgia.