• FizzyOrange@programming.dev
    11·
    11 hours ago

    This mirrors my feelings about Ruby. Especially the lack of type hints. It’s a huge problem when trying to work on large Ruby codebases, e.g. Gitlab or Asciidoctor. Easily doubles the time it takes to get anything done. Sometimes I’ve tried to make a change to Gitlab but had to give up entirely simply because it’s impossible to follow the control flow.

    That’s very rarely a problem with statically typed languages. (It can happen with excessive use of interfaces that are resolved at runtime but it’s much less common.)

    So aside from Rails I can’t really see any reason to use it over even Python, let alone actually good languages like Rust, Go, Typescript, etc.

  • maub@slrpnk.net
    1·
    21 hours ago

    The article starts with a lie, imprinting for computer users and the importance for UX is discussed for at least 20 years, see: Baby Duck Syndrome(wikipedia).

    One can only think of something like this as “their own little theory”, if they are uninformed in both programming and psychology which, after reading this stain of an article, is not far fetched. The correct psychological effect to point out here would be Dunning Kruger (wikipedia).

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    282·
    2 days ago

    it’s hilariously depressing how most people hate on Ruby because of the shit Rails does.

    also, Sheon Han(the author), is a corpo-shilling hack that writes predominantly fluff pieces for his silicon valley friends and neighbors.

    don’t believe what he writes because he only gets paid when his opinions garner traffic.

    want to know why Ruby still has a following? same reason why Java is still holding on. Same reason why COBOL and FORTRAN is still going. because it works and people still use it.

    • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
      11·
      11 hours ago

      None of the points in the article about the flaws of Ruby are because of Rails. In fact the article says the exact opposite - the only reason Ruby is still relevant is because of Rails!

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 hours ago

        you’re wrong. none of the points in the article say anything at all. the pillars that hold up the lies are

        • ruby is bad because python/js good
        • matz is good but DHH is bad and so ruby is bad
        • Twitter failed 14 years ago because ruby is bad and so ruby is still bad
        • ruby is bad because it’s old
        • ruby bad because it’s not used as much as python/js

        Sheon Han worked at Twitter. doubtful he was there between the 2011-2014 rewrite. I also doubt that he’s done much of anything with ruby since he was fired from Twitter after Musk destroyed it. especially so since he’s taken up freelance writing since 2021.

        Sheon Han is attempting to stay relevant by desperately attacking a language he barely uses and hasn’t touched seriously since at least 2021.

        you’re better off ignoring him and “journalists” like him.

  • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
    251·
    2 days ago

    Maybe if I could read the article I’d have something to say about that. I guess we’ll never know, and that’s probably for the best.

        • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
          13·
          2 days ago

          Disclaimer: I’m not Ruby programmer. I evaluated it once, saw no particular reason to use it instead of Python and promptly forgot about it.

          With that said, the specific criticism(s) are:

          • Poor performance. Sure. Ruby does appear to be somewhat slower than Python, but I’m more concerned about the peak memory consumption which is admittedly frequently pretty terrifying. Mind you, if I need high performance, I’m not likely to be using either Ruby or Python. It’s fine for automation scripts, rapid prototyping or experimentation, hypothesis validation, moderate data processing, analysis and visualization, but yes: If you build your (supposedly) hyper-scalable website on Rails or use it for the system software for your embedded device, you’re going to have a bad time. Every tool has its place (except Brainfuck). Don’t use a hammer when you should be using a screwdriver.

          • The above also covers the railing against rails, about which I have no further comment as I’ve never used it. Maybe it’s nice, but if you’re working on something with more concurrent users than your homelab automation UX, there’s undoubtedly better alternatives.

          …And that appears to be it. So it boiled to down to “performance”. Does that in and of itself make Ruby “not a serious programming language”. Well, if it does, then the same applies to Python. Does it mean that there’s probably a better alternative for any given application? Probably yes.

          • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
            11·
            11 hours ago

            You forgot about the lack of static type hints. That’s a serious flaw.

            If you ignore the performance and lack of static types, then I don’t think there’s too much wrong with Ruby but apart from Rails there isn’t really a compelling reason to use it over Python either. And that’s not saying much!

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
      2·
      2 days ago

      No problem with 3rd-party scripts and frames blocked.

      Seriously, this lets me read more articles than with only adblocking.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 days ago

      Me too. What happened there? I thought it might be because some of my browser extensions block few scripts and other elements. Enabling some of the stuff didn’t make reveal the article, so I lost interest. Or is it paid?

      • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
        2·
        2 days ago

        I honestly didn’t care enough to spend time looking into it as I’m not being paid to make Wired’s website functional. Thankfully, BrikoX was the real MVP and ensured nobody has to actually go there to access the content by posting an archive link.

  • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    Hmm, I don’t have too large of a sample size, but I don’t feel like Ruby programs are buggier than Python programs, on average. Not being the language for programming beginners and data scientists, probably aides that impression, though…

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        Perhaps, yes. 😅

        It was a diplomatic way of saying that I doubt the author’s assessment that Ruby’s tooling is worse than Python’s. Partially, because Python’s tooling has traditionally been terrible (even if it’s been improving in the past two years, from what I hear). But yeah, partially because I do not see Ruby programs being as buggy as they insinuate here…

    • entwine@programming.dev
      2·
      1 day ago

      Not being the language for programming beginners and data scientists, probably aides that impression, though…

      I think it was that back when it was relevant (but replace data scientists with web devs)

      I never got interested in the ecosystem myself, but I’ve run into it every now and then. I feel like it’s in the same place as PHP today: still used a lot for legacy reasons, but you’ll get weird looks if you start a new project with it and you’re under the age of 40

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I think it was that back when it was relevant (but replace data scientists with web devs)

        Sure, but if programs from that era are still around, chances are the maintainer is quite experienced by now and has fixed all the funky behaviour. 🙃

        I never got interested in the ecosystem myself, but I’ve run into it every now and then. I feel like it’s in the same place as PHP today: still used a lot for legacy reasons, but you’ll get weird looks if you start a new project with it and you’re under the age of 40

        Ten years ago, a university buddy of mine discovered Ruby and you might’ve thought a miracle happened from how excited he was for it. But yeah, that was also the last time I met someone in real life who was excited about Ruby. 😅

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    122·
    2 days ago

    Ruby was the most approachable language I found and sheparded me from my limits of bash scripting and Windows batch file scripting into the next level.

    The author derides Ruby’s easy readability and syntax because it has issues scaling to large enterprise applications. I don’t disagree there is a performance ceiling, but how many hundreds of thousands of Ruby projects never rose to that level of need? The author is also forgetting that Ruby had Rubygems for easy modular functional additions years before Python eventually got pip.

    I don’t write in Ruby anymore, and Python has evolved to be much more approachable than it was when Ruby was in its prime, however if someone came to me today saying they wanted the easier programming language to learn that could build full applications on Linux, OSX, Windows, and the web, I’d still point them to Ruby with the caveat that it would have limits and they would be better served by Python in the long run.