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What’s your opinion on the Ruby programming language?
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Oldest comments (41)
I like ruby because it is very easy to read but in terms of speed it leaves a lot to be desired compared to other technologies I use :(.
That's why I currently use Crystal (which is like a "Ruby", but compiled).
I agree that Crystal is exciting, but dude. Ruby has come out faster than Python and sometimes Node in a few benchmarks...
Yep. I don't like Python hahaha
Can you share link to those benchmarks? 2 main reasons for not using Ruby now for me are not so type safe (at least in 2016 when I tried it, it appeared not to be) and way slower in my cases than JVM languages. Keep in mind I stated my cases; where I need type safety for my own protection and I do not need simple calls to underlying libraries written in C or whatever, these are libraries I needed for domain specific work.
benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.n...
Granted, they're using the JIT which is still relatively experimental in Ruby but... yeah.
benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.n...
Thx
First time I hear about Crystal but looks nice. Thanks
It's a rare and beautiful gem ❤️💎😉
Ruby is great. I love it.
Coming off of having learned (and struggled) with Javascript, learning Ruby felt like caaaaake. I found it very easy to understand and build that understanding to Ruby on Rails relatively quickly.
Wish it had more standardised uses apart from Rails, it's a beautiful language that should not be forgotten :(
Now I'm going for Go instead tho.
Ruby is the greatest invention since sliced bread.
Honestly? I never used it.
When it was hyped around 2008/09, because of Rails, all of my friends used it at their internships, but they didn't like it anymore when they came back.
I used PHP at that time and switched to JS in 2011, so Ruby was never talked about in any way at my jobs.
I was slightly reluctant to use Ruby early on due to the demand that seemed average unlike JavaScript or Python.
After 2 years though, I’m glad that I picked up this language. It’s beautiful and sometimes, this is inexpressible. 😍😍😍 Writing code in Ruby almost feels like writing sentences in English.
Great language, would be better if typed hehe. It really would be awesome for real async and concurrency support.
Both reasons for which I don't use it on current project. A lot of IO calls where cost is lowered by using async stuff by having app not scale because there's no need for more (count of or powerfull) instances.
You might want to check out Crystal or even Elixir.
I've looked at Elixir before. Never had time to really test it out. However, gotta say on big and complex data it looks less optimal than JVM stuff. I know people like to protect elixir/erlang but if you have complex data and you need to do stuff with it JVM still rocks although I would like Elixir for other stuff. I like Scala but Elixir is more pretty. Feel like a teenager don't know what I want too much good stuff
To be fair, Erlang has been running global telecommunications for decades (Ericsson, T-Mobile run their nodes with it, many LTE nodes run on Erlang) and it's the system WhatsApp (which has quite a few users :D) runs on. OTP, the platform Erlang uses, also contains a distributed real time database called Mnesia.
from Erlang celebrates 20 years as open source
Companies use it for massively scalable systems so I think it's quite battle tested. Not a comparison to the JVM, there are very complex software architectures out there running on the JVM but I wanted to shine a light on Erlang for a moment :-)
That's not the point, it's much better for passing small data in high volumes. Data transformation and calculation is another thing. JVM is not excelent at big numbers but it's a bit better than Erlang so it's in between hardcore language for math and excelent IO like Erlang. That's one of the examples. Also transformating 20MB+ json to yourown stuff can be pain but with JVM stuff i do it quite easily although it's bad to do such thing anyways sometimes you have to do it. That's another example. I would love to use all technologies but that's not always possible
My point wasn't a comparison though, I was just highlighting Erlang.
I agree that we can't always choose the technology we want to use or use them all at the same time :-D
Oh, sry, I take Erlang/Elixir as the same thing I thought you were pointing stuff out to compare them but you just want to mention battle tested part. Yeah I agree it's more than battle tested. Hope I get time to learn it soon
Being Having a Strong Background of Java, First I felt it very easy and Clear to Understand, then When Loops came they made be a bit confusing, after that when I moved to the Object-Oriented Programming I felt quite nice.
When I moved towards the Ruby on Rails Framework, I felt comfortable and easy to understand the Model View and Controller Pattern as well.
I don't like indent-based languages, but at least Ruby as
endstatementsRuby isn't an indent-based language?
It's weird. Everyone seems to think it's easy to read, but I find it's a pain - I'm constantly scooting my eyes back and forth trying to translate it into something that makes sense to me. A lot of the syntax seems to have been implemented just for the hell of it rather than for any good reason, and I've never learned to use it beyond the basics.
What I'm saying is, it might well be a great language, but its first impressions always put me off.
What prior languages do you know?
Also, A lot of things in Ruby have more than one syntax in order to allow for various styles from prior languages, so you may have come across a strange code base.
Started using it in my new job. I do wish it had types for better autocompletion and self-documentation.
Other than that I do like it so far for being elegant and human-readable.
This. I love ruby but after a year of using Typescript + C# only I can say I definitely don’t miss having to fuck around to get proper completion.
I love the Ruby, and with the Rails. I can spin up a simple Web App with API in minutes. I have never struggled in Ruby, Its like you dont need to be a fancy dev to write great ruby code. Its just happen to be Simple, Neat and Clean code that anyone can read. #loveit #ror #7yearsOfRailsExp #ror4lyf
I like and use it, but wish its initial burst of broad popularity had held on through the rise/expansion in tooling and libraries other language ecosystems had. Compared head-to-head with just the compiler or interpreter for other languages, it has a lot of conveniences. But comparing its ecosystem with a JavaScript that can add static type-checking, a pretty-printer, and treat style issues as if they were fatal errors, Ruby is harder to use for large-scale engineering than it could be. Python, JavaScript, and C# seem to have much more investment in their libraries and their flagship web application frameworks have mostly caught up to Ruby, as well.
But on "the other other hand," Ruby has also invested a lot more effort into making sure their community is sustainable, putting it far ahead of other languages in that respect.
I would love to pick it up, maybe just because of how DHH speaks of it :D
I recently tried it and one thing that put me off was the installation. I couldn't access installed gems like rails and searching online for the issue it seems there is a wide range of bundlers people use and I just couldn't find help for my super basic setup. I will probably try reinstalling everything again once I have a little more free time.
I suggest using rvm not to depend on the operating system's ruby :-)
Needing to use rvm was honestly a big reason that I let my ruby use dwindle to just chef customizations; I really couldn't stand having to maintain more than 2 package catalogs.
I would suggest using chruby. It was reviewed and approved by the head rvm maintainer. The only reason to use RVM these days is if you are maintaining a legacy app that needs it.
Didn't know about chruby! Going to check it out :) Thanks!