Is Ruby worth learning in 2019?
A subscriber asked me this, and it's a great question for numerous reasons. Firstly, some bootcamps still teach it, despite its decreasing adoption rates in enterprise development settings.
Secondly, Ruby on Rails (RoR) is one of the earliest backend web frameworks to hit the scene in late 2005. Despite its OG status, it seems to be falling off the popularity chart. Does that mean you should avoid it, along with the language that was used to build the framework?
Is it a bad career investment if you dedicate all your time and money to learning this language along with RoR?
Latest comments (33)
For several years in a row, a lot of articles hinting that Ruby is dead have been published, but there are still many reports saying that the frequency of use of Ruby only grows from year to year. So it’s definitely worth learning and using.
My personal opinion is maybe, unless you plan to work with Ruby on Rails or get hired at a place that works with it. It has a lot of good libraries though, so you might choose to learn it depending on that as well.
But the more general answer is YES: all languages are worth it, they are designed by people, most of them have been around a very long time so they embody constraints and decisions related to the industry, they have faults and quirks and pros and cons. They all teach you something new :)
Disclaimer: I work with Ruby every day but my "programming heart" still belongs to Python ahhaha
Ruby almost the only language that combines classic OOP, FP, another styles of programming and ideas (like closures) in best way.
It's pretty good reason to start learning programming with Ruby.
Short answer: yes.
I'm just gonna justify my answer by saying that the company I currently work for specifically recruited me because of my Ruby (on Rails) experience and two years later, I'm still their number one choice when they get clients asking for RoR... because where I live (France), RoR is not really commonly used but still quite popular. So there aren't a lot of openings for Ruby (on Rails) devs, but when there's one, that's a really precious thing to have in your skill set.
And that's only my professional opinion. My personal opinion would be even simpler: Ruby is an awesome language and even though the Ruby hype has passed, it's still a great back-end language for the web, and more. And as many have said in the other comments: a lot of big players (GitHub, Apple, etc...) use Ruby (on Rails), which says a lot.
Ruby is a great language to learn and Ruby on Rails is a great asset for startups looking for fast prototyping and even bigger companies like the ones recurrently mentioned on the post (ie- Github, Apple.com, Shopify, etc). Also- as a reminder, Airbnb & Twitter both were originally built on RoR until fairly recently, which only validates the point that it's a great asset to start your company until you scale THAAT big. No need to build an overly complex app when you have no users and don't get their needs yet..
Also, as a programmer-friendly language, I think it's extremely valuable to use Ruby to understand the basic programming concepts to greater depth, and then, if desired, to change stack, which is then a lot easier.
-- Just to point out the 'if desired'.. There are a lot of Ruby/RoR good paying jobs out there as well and with the new release of Rails 6.0 things are about to get even funner 😛🔥
Learning a language (and framework) well takes a long time, so it comes down to where you want to invest yours. RoR is good for some types of problems (building backends tightly coupled to a database), so that's what you can expect to find in terms of jobs. It used to be used for server side rendered MVC frontends as well, but most frontend folks would consider that architecture outdated nowadays.
If you're optimizing for the long term, Python has similar expressiveness to Ruby, with the benefit of rapid growth. You get your batteries included frameworks (Django), but also unlock access to a ton of devops and data science jobs. Python is a great long term investment, Ruby is much riskier.
Lastly, JavaScript is probably still the safest long term bet. Node is not what I would call "pleasant" to work with, but the ecosystem is exceptional. Getting proficient in JS keeps your options open, and allows you to contribute across the stack.
I’d take the contrarian approach here. Yes, ruby’s popularity is fading away but many big tech companies(github, airbnb) still use ruby. There may be less ruby jobs or ruby programmers out there now but all that means is that, if you’re a ruby developer, you’re valued much higher. Supply/demand
Since the question is related to Ruby, not RoR, my answer also relates to Ruby only.
So, should you learn ruby this year? Well, it depends. The language is just a tool. If you're beginner - yes, learn Ruby. It's a scripting language, it's expressive, easy to read, enjoyable to write, with rich standard library, it has very nice package manager, capable of doing most of the tasks.
If you're more senior - well, you need at least one scripting language anyway. So python, perl or ruby? Depends on the preferences that you have.
If we speak about a project - well, for MVP or prototyping, ruby is great. For more enterprise goals - again, it depends. Most of the time the prototypes are the ones that live in production systems anyway.
And to summarize: the language is a tool, give it a try, if you enjoy working with, there will always be a job for it. Don't think too much if it's worth learning or not. The experience that you'll get with it gonna pay afterwards in one way or another.
I'd say definitely yes, Ruby/Rails are a joy to work with and still one of the best tools to build web apps. For a new project I had a discussion with my client recently, and we ended up with PHP/Laravel rather than Rails because he's more familiar with PHP - but even then I benefit from my Rails knowledge because Laravel was so heavily inspired by it. Anyway, I believe it's good for any (senior) web dev to have more than one tool within their arsenal and for me Ruby/Rails should absolutely be there!
It is still my choice for new projects—haven’t found a web framework as flexible and complete as Rails in any language.
Yes.
Nope. If you know, that's great, but its popularity goes down. RoR thing is still popular, but mostly in US and not as before.
Python beats it.
Who knows it will continue to do some things, but mostly it'll join PHP in the journey to the next world, where they join Pascal, Cobol and other ancestors.
Worth learning Python (if you by some reason still don't know it), Node.js, Go.
They said that about VB.NET...
isrubydead.com
LOL!
I got my first Ruby/RoR job in the fall of 2018. It's certainly possible to find good work with Ruby today. If you want to talk longer term, that's harder to predict. Who could have imagined ten years ago the number to js developers today?
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