All Quiet on the Western Front: Is Rails overshadowing Ruby?

[Trans]

Perhaps I have a skewed perspective (it happens , but it seems as if
the ruby-talk mailing list has become rather "calm" in recent months.
While Ruby-core appears to have a bit of activity, much of it seems a
response to the stillness on talk. And alternate Ruby lists seem to
have fallen largely silent, with one expection: Rails. So I wonder, is
Ruby at risk of becoming little more than a subset techonolgy of Rails?

T.

 

[Pat Maddox]

Ruby can't be a subset technology of Rails, simply because Rails is a
subset of Ruby

For my purposes, using Ruby outside of Rails just isn't necessary. My
shop only develops web applications, so it would make sense that Rails
gets far more use, at least from us. We don't use PHP to write
command line apps either.

Ruby's a nice language, but I think it's particularly well suited for
web development. I can't say I see anything wrong with the direction
it seems to be taking.

 

[David A. Black]

Hi --

Perhaps I have a skewed perspective (it happens , but it seems as if
the ruby-talk mailing list has become rather "calm" in recent months.

Please -- don't jinx us, just enjoy it


David

 

[Jim Freeze]

Ruby's a nice language, but I think it's particularly well suited for ---------------------------------
web development. I can't say I see anything wrong with the direction

---------------

I've seen others make this same comment. I find it interesting
that at RubyConf 2001 (the first Ruby conference) I heard multiple
times that Ruby was not ready for web development.

I know rails is new, but I'm not sure that the language has made
any significant changes to justify such an about face in opinion.

However, I think it is a lesson in how people can take
their own opinion (or a common opinion) and believe in it as fact.

Rails has opened the eyes of to many to what they could not see.
David and his RubyOnRails is to Ruby what Michaelangelo and
Michaelangelo's David are to a large of stone.

The only difference is that Ruby has more value than a large rock.

It is also clear that some people just see the statue.
But me, I see the process. I am waiting to see what gets
created when another Michaelangelo comes along and finds Ruby.

 

[Pat Maddox]

---------------

I've seen others make this same comment. I find it interesting
that at RubyConf 2001 (the first Ruby conference) I heard multiple
times that Ruby was not ready for web development.

That was four years ago. Certainly things can change enough in that
time to make Ruby a serious consideration for web development.

I know rails is new, but I'm not sure that the language has made
any significant changes to justify such an about face in opinion.

Languages don't need to make significant changes to gain usefulness.
Language maturity comes with the development of new libraries and
frameworks, and it's these libraries and frameworks that add value to
the language itself, and further the popularity. And as a language
becomes more popular, new libs and frameworks get developed, and it
goes around and around until everyone loves it

That's what Rails has done in the area of web development. Ruby
itself isn't well-suited for web development - the fact that there's a
very nice framework for web apps adds that value. We all know that
you can write web apps in any language. There's just no point when
other languages provide effective mechanisms for doing so.

However, I think it is a lesson in how people can take
their own opinion (or a common opinion) and believe in it as fact.

My opinion comes from writing web applications for 7 years now, using
C and Perl CGIs, PHP, Java, and ASP. Again, the usefulness of each
language increases with the emergence of development frameworks, and I
find that Rails is by far the simplest and most effective. That is,
however, just my opinion.

Rails has opened the eyes of to many to what they could not see.
David and his RubyOnRails is to Ruby what Michaelangelo and
Michaelangelo's David are to a large of stone.

The only difference is that Ruby has more value than a large rock.

It is also clear that some people just see the statue.
But me, I see the process. I am waiting to see what gets
created when another Michaelangelo comes along and finds Ruby.

I have no doubt that more people will come along and add value to
Ruby. It really is a nice language, and I think we'll see that people
will want to incorporate it into other areas of development. As that
happens, new frameworks will be developed, and we'll see it increase
in popularity in areas besides the web.

 

[James Britt]

David and his RubyOnRails is to Ruby what Michaelangelo and
Michaelangelo's David are to a large of stone.

That is the funniest thing I've read all week.



James

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Trans,

T> Perhaps I have a skewed perspective (it happens , but it seems as if
T> the ruby-talk mailing list has become rather "calm" in recent months.
T> While Ruby-core appears to have a bit of activity, much of it seems a
T> response to the stillness on talk. And alternate Ruby lists seem to
T> have fallen largely silent, with one expection: Rails. So I wonder, is
T> Ruby at risk of becoming little more than a subset techonolgy of Rails?

No, we need a good "plone" clone, then we can use this list for
talking about this subset of Rails technology.

 

[James Britt]

Perhaps I have a skewed perspective (it happens , but it seems as if
the ruby-talk mailing list has become rather "calm" in recent months.

Really? There seems to me to be steady increase in traffic on ruby-talk.

While Ruby-core appears to have a bit of activity, much of it seems a
response to the stillness on talk. And alternate Ruby lists seem to
have fallen largely silent, with one expection: Rails.

Well, there's steady discussion on the Nitro/Og list, but ruby-musings
does seem quite.

So I wonder, is
Ruby at risk of becoming little more than a subset techonolgy of
Rails?

There may be some chance of Ruby "Strutsification", where increasing
numbers of people are familiar with a specific API or tool but have
little understanding of the underlying technology.

That may be good news for people looking for work customizing or fixing
up Rails sites when needs outgrow basic skills. (Or it may be mixed
lots of Ruby jobs, but you'll be required to use Rails even when
there are better Ruby options.)

Some of the Rails fanboy behavior may put a few people off Ruby in
general, though I expect that over time the intrinsic value of the
language itself will outshine any particular application.

(I suppose, of course, we'll be having the same discussion when the next
generation of Ruby application framework makes a splash. The more, the
merrier.)


James

 

[Adelle Hartley]

Perhaps I have a skewed perspective (it happens , but it
seems as if the ruby-talk mailing list has become rather
"calm" in recent months.
While Ruby-core appears to have a bit of activity, much of it
seems a response to the stillness on talk. And alternate Ruby
lists seem to have fallen largely silent, with one expection:
Rails. So I wonder, is Ruby at risk of becoming little more
than a subset techonolgy of Rails?

I feel my perspective is skewed too, as I have only been using a subset of
Rails (ActiveRecord).

I stumbled across Ruby when I was looking for Windows-friendly scripting
languages in which to use the COM-based ORM layer that I was developing.
Then I discovered ActiveRecord which was practically a prototype of what I
was working on. A couple of hours of coding later (spread very thinly
between other work) and I'd written a few extensions to AR that made it into
exactly what I wanted.

Now I'm using Ruby to prototype other parts of my application stack. It's a
brilliant language.

The web isn't the only platform that people write software for.

Adelle.

 

[Joao Pedrosa]

Hi,

The web isn't the only platform that people write software for.

Agreed!

Ruby rocks soooooooo much. It's a pity that the most used languages
suck in comparison to Ruby. Matz is a genius. Ruby is the most
precious gem of the world.

To me, Ruby is "The Matrix" or "The Matrix" is Ruby... hehehe.

Ruby makes OO work, not the other way around...

A code in Ruby is almost alive. It's like playing "The Sims" with code
in Ruby.

If Ruby is a programming language, I don't know how to call the
others... Maybe almost useless programming languages? Maybe dead
programming languages?

People want to tame this beast called Ruby, but Ruby has been made to
be free... Please, let it be free and live it's own life.

Cheers,
Joao