In the start of 2023, I will attend a full-stack coding Bootcamp which focus is Ruby instead of JavaScript.
My personal number one language to learn anything related to coding or programming has been always JS.
But after glancing over Ruby, I must say it looks interesting to learn more about
But what is the level of career opportunities of Ruby?
I searched around the internet for any rapport about the future of this language but have not found anything concrete about for example employment ratings in Europe, lots of info about the US but that is not relevant for me.
Long story short, my actual questions are:
-If somebody knows reliable resources/links about programming employment (in Ruby) ratings/numbers in Europe, please share these
-What are, in your opinion, the advantages/disadvantages in working with Ruby as opposed to JS for full stack web development, if there are any?
I look forward to your insights and/or opinionsâŚ
So firstly, youâre using a forum written in Ruby. And Exercism is written in Ruby. So as the person primarily in charge of choosing tech for Exercism, Iâm probably pretty biased!
Ruby is awesome - itâs fun, productive and has a great community. Iâd strongly argue that Ruby on Rails should be the backend of choice for most non-enterprise websites, and there are thousands upon thousands of companies out there using Ruby for that purpose.
I donât have figures to give (Iâd only be doing the same Googling youâre doing) but I donât think youâll have anything to worry about from an employability perspective. And once youâve learnt one language, itâs a thousand times easier to learn another anyway if you choose a different direction.
You qualified this as âfull stackâ. But it should be noted that embedded systems, systems administration, âdevopsâ, telephony, and a lot of less visible work is done with Ruby, than just âwebâ.
I started using it in 1997 for systems administration, and replaced some of the Perl work that was being done and had been done. I have used it as well with Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) systems.
The things to look for in employment in Ruby, might be to include Hanami, Sinatra, and, of course, Rails, in your searching, but also include JRuby.
I wish I knew of where you could find the reporting that you were looking for, but I can not.
I also think that Ruby is a great language, has an awesome community, and enough job opportunities that I think youâll be fine. My city has a lot of Ruby jobs, but I think thatâs in part because one of our universities teaches it as introductory programming language, so itâs easier to find junior devs that already know a bit of Ruby.
What do you mean by âit focuses on Rubyâ? I had a look at the curricula of a few bootcamps and the bootcamps that used Ruby or Python for the backend part taught JavaScript in the frontend part. JavaScript is the language of the browser and you canât have interactivity without it.
One of the reasons why companies chose to use Javascript/Node for the backend is that people donât have to switch between two languages when they move from the frontend code to the backend code.
One of the reasons why companies choose Ruby for the backend is that itâs a very productive framework with a strong ecosystem.
But I think on a personal level itâs a lot about personal preference which language and which framework you prefer for a certain task. And this might also change over time, just as your views on software development changes. But thatâs also a reason why I think itâs good to learn more than one language in the beginning, so you gain a broader perspective on things.
Well, let me answer a slighty different question. The main advantage of of developing using the Framework called Ruby on Rails is that it frees you of thinking about many things. Itâs structure allows anyone on the planet who is familiar with Ruby on Rails to easily find where code should be added or modified to achieve that feature you want to add or modify. Migrations help you setup/tear-down the database. There is a culture of TDD/BDD, a really friendly community and productivity tends to be very high in a good team. Itâs just a sweet experience!
Regarding JS, the one advantage of JS for full stack web development is you only have one language to master.
@iHiD Thank you for your response
I did not realize that this forum and exercism is written in Ruby, that is nice to know!
@kotp Thank you for responding
I will check out Hanami & Sinatra and JRuby, I am still trying to see the big picture of the âworldâ where Ruby lives in and this will help me with that so thank you
First I was going to start a Bootcamp in Amsterdam and their curriculum had no mention of anything Ruby or related, only JavaScript. But suddenly they cancelled all Bootcamps for now and 2023. Now I am in the application process for Le Wagon from Berlin but they have a lot of campuses, also in Amsterdam and they focus on Ruby.
Yeah, had a look at the curriculum week 4&5 is spent on learning JavaScript frontend work. I assume that they will not use a single-page application framework, but I think thatâs totally valid, in my biased opinion even preferable. The thoughtwork tech radar explicitly warns that people are choosing SPAs as a default and shooting themselves in the foot: Techniques | Thoughtworks :)
There are a few different implementations of Ruby that all have their own runtime characteristics. Besides the default implementation that most people use, there is JRuby runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), thereâs GitHub - mruby/mruby: Lightweight Ruby for the embedded work that @kotp mentioned, and TruffleRuby, a Ruby implementation that runs on GraalVM, a new VM developed by Oracle that allows compiling to native code with ahead-of-time compilation (AOT). There has also been work of speeding up Ruby with a just-in-time compiler, YJIT, by Shopify. Shopify runs on Ruby and they have been investing a lot into the ecosystem in the last couple of years. Another interesting project of theirs is Sorbet, their type checker. The details are not important for you right now, what Iâm trying to communicate is that a lot of interesting development is happening in the Ruby space, imo.
A lot of the Ruby web frameworks where and are influential in the space, a lot of frameworks in other languages have been inspired by them, see this list for Sinatra.
Example for the DevOps space are Puppet and Chef. Another non-web project that I really like is Asciidoctor, an amazing toolchain for the AsciiDoc markup language, that is often used for documentation in the tech space. People are even writing whole books with it, and not only in the self-publishing space, eg. OâReilly supports it.
By the by, Shopify and Github are also ruby babies.
Down the line you will also find work less cumbersome. Ruby has 9000 methods pre-defined for you, which is rivaled only by Java and Python, in its ecosystem richness.
I think I can understand what you are saying as 5 years ago I was in same situation. I was PHP developer and one of my colleague pushing me to learn Ruby, but I have wait 2 years to beginning learn Ruby because internet was telling me it is gone, it is dieing lnaguage. But then finally I started learning and got huge benefits in job search and opportunities. I do understand it is not so common like php/nodejs jobs but still there is requirement everywhere for Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
There are two advantage one if coding fun, Ruby is very friendly, beautiful language and give you happiness, it will make your solution very easy to understand and enjoyable when you code. The changes are part of software engineer, Ruby is geard to help to make those changes very easy, I have worked in two very large monoloithic project and did huge changes without any sweat.
The best practices and how community is following is quit good. You wonât see people creating every day new wheels, but try improve already existing stuff, which is not in Javascript. Every day you see new framework, new runners and new stacks coming. Instead of improving one of its technology make start to make something new. Community is quit strong and mature they really following all best practices with very religious way. So I suggest you should start it you wonât regret.
