Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading! Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? My free Maintainable Rails email course will help you build software that still feels alive ten years from now. They creak… they bloat… they quietly suffocate your team. Join me on Maintainable.fm where I speak with seasoned engineers about the art of improving existing software. It does.And if that makes it “unserious”… maybe that’s exactly why it belongs in the conversation.
Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language
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, capital and current account 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 to migrate its backend to Scala, a more robust language. Ruby, you might’ve guessed, is dynamically typed.
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 work.
Re: “Ruby reads almost like plain English”???
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.
Why We Still Choose Ruby on Rails
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.
A JetRockets Response to WIRED’s “Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language”
In the 2010s, a wave of companies replaced much of their Ruby infrastructure, and when legacy Ruby code remained, new services were written in higher-performance languages. Choose other languages for maximum raw speed. As a result, many teams use Ruby for web apps where iteration speed matters. Despite limits, Ruby remains practical for many startups and product teams. Yet teams such as Twitter migrated services to Scala to meet scale. Therefore, choose a language that fits your constraints and team skills.
Where Ruby earns respect and where it falls short
Ruby doesn’t seem to be for them. It’s how sustainable software gets made. GitHub held the world’s source code together for years using Ruby. That’s not an indictment… that’s success. Ruby wasn’t trying to win benchmarks… it was trying to keep you moving. Ruby made programming approachable.
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.
Ruby never was that much …
As a result, some teams view Ruby as legacy, not strategic. Ruby offers these tax credits could boost refunds for low 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.
- ” — says a lot about what someone thinks programming is supposed to feel like.
- Toward the part of programming that remembers people are involved.
- Consequently, teams choose Ruby when developer productivity matters.
- Ruby earned its place by prioritizing developer joy and fast iteration.
- It’s often credited with making programming “click”; imprintees speak of it with a certain indebtedness and affection.
Healthy Rails Apps Don’t Happen by Accident
In my world… running a software consultancy for a few decades… I’ve never seen a team fail because they chose Ruby. It helped experienced developers rediscover a sense of lightness in their work. It helped small teams build momentum before anxiety caught up. Among newer developers, Python and JavaScript rank much higher. In the early 2000s, when building web applications was cumbersome, Rails offered a one-stop shop for developers. When Danish developer David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH, released Rails in 2004, Ruby ceased to be the province of nice Japanese programmers.
Why ‘Ruby is not a serious programming language’ matters?
- The future won’t be owned by one paradigm or one language or one ideology.
- A better one is… does Ruby still have something meaningful to contribute to the next chapter of software?
- Join me on Maintainable.fm where I speak with seasoned engineers about the art of improving existing software.
- Anyone whose identity depended on programming being a stern activity.
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.
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.
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?
Context for the programming language debate
It simply resonates with the people it resonates with. Some people like jazz. That’s not a failure of the language.
More so even than Python—a language known for its readability—Ruby reads almost like plain English. 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. It wasn’t until my fourth job that I found myself on a team that mainly used what are the tax benefits of homeownership 2020 it. Therefore, judge the language by requirements, not slogans. Because Ruby powers many real products, it clearly has practical utility. Visit the company website and the company blog to read case studies.
