The future of programming is fuzzy for everyone. Gratitude for a language that centers the human being. But the sentiment wasn’t nostalgia. A detail reaching for meaning that wasn’t actually connected to the point.
Is Ruby Still a ‘Serious’ Programming Language?
Toward the part of programming that remembers people are involved. Gratitude for a community that believes programming can be expressive. Ruby just needed to stay out of the way so people could focus on the real how to lower your 2020 tax bill work.
- Ruby offers clear, English-like syntax and a community that values developer joy.
- It simply resonates with the people it resonates with.
- If you arrived late, you missed a chapter when the language felt like a quiet rebellion.
- Ruby, you might’ve guessed, is dynamically typed.
A JetRockets Response to WIRED’s “Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language”
Therefore, decisions should weigh developer productivity against throughput needs. Ruby earned its place by prioritizing developer joy and fast iteration. Therefore, evaluate needs, not slogans, when choosing a language.
And the community mostly shrugged… because we were busy building things. Anyone whose identity depended on programming being a stern activity. The community was small. If you arrived late, you missed a chapter when the language felt like a quiet rebellion. ” — says a lot about what someone thinks programming is supposed to feel like. Ruby persists, for now, as a kind of professional comfort object, sustained by the inertia of legacy code bases and the loyalty of those who first imprinted upon it.
You may wonder why people are still using Ruby in 2025. Python, though also a slow language, carved out a dominant niche in scientific computing and became the de facto language of AI. What’s more, everything Ruby does, another language now does better, leaving it without a distinct niche. Twitter’s collapse during the 2010 World Cup served as a wake-up call, and the company resolved tax deductions that went away after the tax cuts and jobs act to migrate its backend to Scala, a more robust language. Ruby, you might’ve guessed, is dynamically typed.
To arrive at a language late is to see it without the forgiving haze of sentimentality that comes with imprinting—the fond willingness to overlook a flaw as a quirk. By then, I’d heard enough paeans to its elegance that I was full of anticipation, ready to be charmed, to experience the kind of professional satori its adherents described. I wrote my first “Hello world” in an awful thing called Java, but programming only began to feel intuitive when I learned JavaScript (I know, I know) and OCaml—both of which fundamentally shaped my tastes. It’s often credited with making programming “click”; imprintees speak of it with a certain indebtedness and affection.
Let’s Build Something Great Together
As a result, some teams view Ruby as legacy, not strategic. Ruby offers clear, English-like syntax and a community that values developer joy. For many people, that language is Ruby. Ruby on Rails developer sharing thoughts on software development, technology, and more since 2005. Join 1,500+ Rails developers who decided to get ahead of that curve. Toward the part that says maybe the code should serve the team… not the other way around.
Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language
Ruby is not a serious programming language, some developers still claim. In the programming language debate, Ruby earns points for developer productivity. Still, legacy codebases keep many teams tied to Ruby. Choose languages that match your constraints and team skills. As a result, the claim Ruby is not a serious programming language still circulates. Consequently, teams choose Ruby when developer productivity matters.
Performance and benchmarks
Ruby has real strengths, and you should weigh them carefully. Because it sounds decisive, the phrase spreads quickly in forums and hiring posts. We will weigh trade-offs, compare alternatives, and survey real-world use cases. Because Rails popularized web development, Ruby shaped many major codebases.
It’s not the syntax, it’s the community
However, software development trends still value rapid iteration. Because Ruby powered many early web successes, its influence is real. If you prioritize fast iteration and developer happiness, Ruby still makes sense.
itinerary builder
On Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey, it’s been slipping in popularity for years, going from a top-10 technology in 2013 to 18th this year—behind even Assembly. The main code bases of Airbnb, GitHub, Twitter, Shopify, and Stripe were built on it. It survives because of its parasitic relationship with Ruby on Rails, the web framework that enabled Ruby’s widespread adoption and continues to anchor its relevance.
My only experience of Ruby…
- GitHub held the world’s source code together for years using Ruby.
- What I saw wasn’t a bejeweled tool but a poor little thing that hadn’t quite gotten the news that the world of programming had moved on.
- Ruby attracts people who care how code feels to write and read.
- Yet teams such as Twitter migrated services to Scala to meet scale.
- As a result, some teams view Ruby as legacy, not strategic.
- We will weigh trade-offs, compare alternatives, and survey real-world use cases.
It simply resonates with the people it resonates with. Some people like jazz. That’s not a failure of the language.
Is Ruby Dying?
A better one is… does Ruby still have something meaningful to contribute to the next chapter of software? I still think that’s the wrong question. And honestly… I think unserious people will play an important role in the future too. Culture doesn’t reliably reward the serious.
Is Ruby still a ‘serious’ programming language? Ruby attracts people who care how code feels to write and read. The question Sheon Han poses — “Is Ruby a serious programming language?
And if you need a reminder that seriousness isn’t the reliable signal people wish it were… Readability will matter more as AI writes more code. The future won’t be owned guide to cash handling by one paradigm or one language or one ideology.
