Ruby momentum?

[Preston Crawford]

I'm an outsider to the Ruby community. I've used it a time or two,
mostly to get familiar with it. I've read part of the PickAxe, but my
job (Java) keeps me in Java-land. I'm wondering what those of you using
Ruby feel are Ruby's chances of taking off. At least to the extent that
you could begin to see it used in places where J2EE is being used
currently. I know this is already happening. But my question is more
with regards to the future. Is something like RoR worth learning in the
context of being able to actually put it to use in the future? I know
I'm asking for conjecture. And that's all I expect. But not being
actively involved in the community, I get no sense as to how much
momentum Ruby has, and thus what the chances of it becoming more
commonly used, are.

I know Java has a head start and has the backing of many large
corporations, so it's perhaps not an apt comparison to make. But I like
the language. And I like the philosophy of Ruby. To what extent this is
translating into projects and jobs, however, I have no idea.

Preston

 

[Jon A. Lambert]

I know Java has a head start and has the backing of many large
corporations, so it's perhaps not an apt comparison to make. But I
like the language. And I like the philosophy of Ruby. To what extent
this is translating into projects and jobs, however, I have no idea.

You might want to learn COBOL. More transactions are processed by COBOL
programs than the entire number of transactions that occur over the
internet. ;-)

Who knows maybe even this Java thing will take off one day.

 

[Gennady Bystritsky]

I'm an outsider to the Ruby community. I've used it a time or two,
mostly to get familiar with it. I've read part of the PickAxe, but my
job (Java) keeps me in Java-land. I'm wondering what those of you
using
Ruby feel are Ruby's chances of taking off. At least to the extent
that

For many people here Ruby already soars hight above where no other
languages can reach ;-). I love C++ and use it professionally every
day, but evening comes and tired after day's labor I get to my Ruby
pet projects at home just to relax. And often a get more results in
less time, let alone satisfaction.

I must mention that my day work involves quite a bit of Ruby as
well .

Gennady.

 

[Matthew Desmarais]

I know Java has a head start and has the backing of many large
corporations, so it's perhaps not an apt comparison to make. But I like
the language. And I like the philosophy of Ruby. To what extent this is
translating into projects and jobs, however, I have no idea.

Preston

I've been able to finagle some things and get Ruby instituted as the
Preferred Scripting Language at my (admittedly small) shop. We don't do
Java. There isn't any point for us. We _have_ had some .Net stuff
worked up though, and I've managed to bring our main .Net guy over to
the red. He seems to have more fun using it and for some reason doing
ambitious thigs with Ruby doesn't seem to threaten him as much as doing
the same things with .Net did.

I'm trying to move everything we do over to Ruby, but that will take
some doing (and a managable spreadsheet-like GUI widget, which is an
entirely diff'rent matter). I'm hoping that knocking out a couple of
rails apps to replace existing clunkers will help.

I'm not sure if there are many big-time Ruby shops out there. I'm not
sure it matters to me any more. Ruby will continue to be my language of
choice and I'll continue to use it for my personal projects while I'm
waiting for someone to hire me to work on theirs.

 

[Ryan Leavengood]

Is something like RoR worth learning in the
context of being able to actually put it to use in the future?

Before I try to answer your question, a little background: I like to say
I was "born and raised on Java." It was my first major programming
language that I start using back in 1997 in college. All of my
employment, including my current job, has had Java is the primary
development language. Yet I'm now starting to hate Java.

Compared to Ruby, Java is incredibly verbose, there are just too many
overly complex APIs, and when I program in it, I feel like my hands are
tied. With Ruby I feel free.

I was first exposed to Ruby in early 2001, and I even attended (and
presented at) the first International Ruby Conference. But as I said
above my job was using Java, and I just didn't see much money-making
potential in becoming a pure Ruby developer. Plus I had other real-life
issues that pretty much took me away from the Ruby fold for a few years.

Fast forward to a few months ago: I hear all this buzz about Rails, take
a look, and *BAM*, I'm reminded of how much I love Ruby.

So to finally answer your question: I think Ruby and Rails and many of
the other cool Ruby technologies out now are totally worth learning. I
have real confidence that the future of software development will be
primarily in flexible, dynamic languages like Ruby.

Right now Rails is probably the number 1 way to make money with Ruby
(the web is king after all), but I think it has really just started the
revolution. It is bringing a lot of fresh blood into the Ruby community,
and while every Rails developer may not expand into a full-blown Ruby
developer, many will, and each new person will add that much more value
to the community.

Before you know it will have a Rails equivalent in all kinds of domains:

- GUI programming.
- Audio processing.
- Video processing.
- Mathematics.
- Scientific domains.
- Game programming.
- Etc.

It is a great time to be a Ruby developer, and I think the time to get
in is now, because all of us will eventually be known as the pioneers
once everyone else jumps on the bandwagon.

Ryan

 

[Florian Groß]

Before you know it will have a Rails equivalent in all kinds of domains:

- Game programming.

Getting there with ruby/gosu. See http://www.raschke.de/julian/gosu/ --
it isn't entirely general and does not do 3D (though it uses graphics
hardware acceleration via the 3D APIs heavily), but it certainly feels
like Ruby to me.

I've used it for 48 hour game development compos and it didn't get into
the way at all.



That aside, regarding learning Ruby: Lots of languages are adapting Ruby
ideas right now, Python is taking the blocks, Perl6 is taking lots of
small things like Ruby's case equality operator and C# 2.0 introduces
block-like constructs and some of Ruby's standard library.
(ArrayList.ConvertAll, ArrayList.FindAll etc. -- just search for Ruby at
the MSDN weblogs and you will see that there are lots of positive
postings about it even there.)

So even if it turns out that you won't be able to use Ruby itself on a
future project you will likely still be able to apply knowledge that you
got via Ruby to other languages.

 

[James Edward Gray II]

Ryan Leavengood wrote:



Getting there with ruby/gosu. See http://www.raschke.de/julian/=20
gosu/ -- it isn't entirely general and does not do 3D (though it =20
uses graphics hardware acceleration via the 3D APIs heavily), but =20
it certainly feels like Ruby to me.

I can't wait to use that library. I sure hope an OS X version is in =20
the works...

James Edward Gray II

 

[David Heinemeier Hansson]

Right now Rails is probably the number 1 way to make money with Ruby

(the web is king after all), but I think it has really just started the
revolution. It is bringing a lot of fresh blood into the Ruby community,
and while every Rails developer may not expand into a full-blown Ruby
developer, many will, and each new person will add that much more value
to the community.

We actually just yesterday started a list on the Rails wiki in order
to find out how many people are actually making a living with Ruby on
Rails. And boy, quite a few already do! There are 110+ people from ~20
countries that are "...earning a substantial or full paycheck from
working professionally with Ruby on Rails":

http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/WorkingProfessionallyWithRails

And with 5,000+ orders of the Rails book, I'm pretty sure that list is
going to grow rapidly through the rest of the year. We're scheduled to
hit OSCON, JAOO, EuroOSCON, and other conferences with presentations
and keynotes to help raise awareness even further.
--=20
David Heinemeier Hansson
http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com -- Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com -- Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com -- Web-application framework

 

[Keith Nicholas]

anything planned for OOPSLA?

=20
We actually just yesterday started a list on the Rails wiki in order
to find out how many people are actually making a living with Ruby on
Rails. And boy, quite a few already do! There are 110+ people from ~20
countries that are "...earning a substantial or full paycheck from
working professionally with Ruby on Rails":
=20
http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/WorkingProfessionallyWithRails
=20
And with 5,000+ orders of the Rails book, I'm pretty sure that list is
going to grow rapidly through the rest of the year. We're scheduled to
hit OSCON, JAOO, EuroOSCON, and other conferences with presentations
and keynotes to help raise awareness even further.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson
http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com -- Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com -- Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com -- Web-application framework
=20

 

[David Heinemeier Hansson]

anything planned for OOPSLA?

Not on my account, anyway. I'm doing RubyConf and EuroOSCON
back-to-back. Are any other Rubyists going to OOPSLA?
--=20
David Heinemeier Hansson
http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com -- Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com -- Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com -- Web-application framework

 

[Jim Weirich]

anything planned for OOPSLA?

Well yes ... kinda.

As a special pre-OOPSLA event, we are planning a special three day Ruby
extravaganza event featuring some of the most well known Ruby personalities
on the net. It's called ... RubyConf.

Ok, I guess its not really *at* OOPSLA. But it is in the same place,
immediately prior to OOPSLA. If you are coming to OOPSLA, its easy to come a
couple days early and take in the Ruby Conference as well.

 

[Curt Hibbs]

I know Java has a head start and has the backing of many large
corporations, so it's perhaps not an apt comparison to make. But I like
the language. And I like the philosophy of Ruby. To what extent this is
translating into projects and jobs, however, I have no idea.

Sometime soon (next month?), O'Reilly is publishing Bruce Tate's new
book "Beyond Java". I highly recommend you read it (or attend his
presentation of the same name at one of the No Fluff Just Stuff
symposiums). In there I think you will find persuasive arguments for
learning something like Ruby.

Curt

 

[Alan Garrison]

You might want to learn COBOL.

Hey, who wants to start a COBOL on Rails project?

 

[Booker C. Bense]

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I'm an outsider to the Ruby community. I've used it a time or two,
mostly to get familiar with it. I've read part of the PickAxe, but my
job (Java) keeps me in Java-land. I'm wondering what those of you using
Ruby feel are Ruby's chances of taking off. At least to the extent that
you could begin to see it used in places where J2EE is being used
currently. I know this is already happening. But my question is more
with regards to the future. Is something like RoR worth learning in the
context of being able to actually put it to use in the future? I know
I'm asking for conjecture. And that's all I expect. But not being
actively involved in the community, I get no sense as to how much
momentum Ruby has, and thus what the chances of it becoming more
commonly used, are.

I know Java has a head start and has the backing of many large
corporations, so it's perhaps not an apt comparison to make. But I like
the language. And I like the philosophy of Ruby. To what extent this is
translating into projects and jobs, however, I have no idea.

_ I've gotten unsolicited inquiries from recruiters looking for
Ruby on Rails experience. Since my Ruby expertise is actually
pretty limited, I suspect there must be some demand for
experienced people. I would think that if you want a Ruby
job ROR is a must. I see it as being the equivalent for Ruby of
what cgi scripting was for perl in the late 90's.

_ Booker C. Bense



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[Stephan Kämper]

And with 5,000+ orders of the Rails book, I'm pretty sure that list is
going to grow rapidly through the rest of the year. We're scheduled to

Five thousand! Wow, that's a huge number, indeed.
Congratulations! 5000 sold - and the book is is just being printed (as
far as I know).

To everybody involved in getting this book published: Thanks a lot!

Happy rubying - on Rails or otherwise

Stephan

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

Wait until they finish Apache's mod_cobol first.

And wouldn't it be "COBOL via Canals"?

Worse: COBOL in caves.

 

[Keith Nicholas]

Well thats just excellent

=20
Well yes ... kinda.
=20
As a special pre-OOPSLA event, we are planning a special three day Ruby
extravaganza event featuring some of the most well known Ruby personaliti= es
on the net. It's called ... RubyConf.
=20
Ok, I guess its not really *at* OOPSLA. But it is in the same place,
immediately prior to OOPSLA. If you are coming to OOPSLA, its easy to co= me a
couple days early and take in the Ruby Conference as well.
=20

 

[Lyndon Samson]

Hang onto your Original Pickaxe's, they'll be worth a bit soon

 

[Hal Fulton]

Wait until they finish Apache's mod_cobol first.

And wouldn't it be "COBOL via Canals"?

Forget COBOL entirely... there's an OOP variant
out there now!

It's called ADD 1 TO COBOL...


Hal

 

[David Brady]

It's called ADD 1 TO COBOL...

ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL.

*shuddergiggle*

-dB