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Between Rails At Scale and byroot's blogs, it's currently a fantastic time to be interested in in-depth discussions around Ruby internals and performance! And w

Between Rails At Scale and byroot's blogs, it's currently a fantastic time to be interested in in-depth discussions around Ruby internals and performance! And with all the recent improvements in Ruby and Rails, it's a great time to be a Rubyist in general!

jupp0r 2y ago
Is it? To me it seems like Ruby is declining [1]. It's still popular for a specific niche of applications, but to me it seems like it's well past its days of glory. Recent improvements are nice, but is a JIT really that exciting technologically in 2025? [1]: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ruby/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ruby/
- chris12321 2y ago
  Ruby will probably never again be the most popular language in the world, and it doesn't need to be for the people who enjoy it to be excited about the recent improvements in performance, documentation, tooling, ecosystem, and community.
  - faizshah 2y ago
    I think ruby can get popular again with the sort of contrarian things Rails is doing like helping developers exit Cloud. There isn’t really a much more productive web dev setup than Rails + your favorite LLM tool. Will take time to earn Gen Z back to Rails though and away from Python/TS or Go/Rust.
    - jimmaswell 2y ago
      My impression is that a Rails app is an unmaintainable dynamically-typed ball of mud that might give you the fast upfront development to get to a market or get funded but will quickly fall apart at scale, e.g. Twitter fail whale. And Ruby is too full of "magic" that quickly makes it too hard to tell what's going on or accidentally make something grossly inefficient if you don't understand the magic, which defeats the point of the convenience. Is this perception outdated, and if so what changed?
      - m00x 2y ago
        Rails can become a ball of mud as much as any other framework can. It's not the fastest language, but it's faster than a lot of dynamic languages. Other than the lack of native types, you can manage pretty large rails apps easily. Chime, Stripe, and Shopify all use RoR and they all have very complex, high-scale financial systems. The strength of your tool is limited to the person who uses the tool.
        amomchilov 2y ago
        The unrefactorable ball of mud problem is real, which is why both Stripe and Shopify have highly statically typed code bases (via Sorbet). Btw Stripe uses Ruby, but not Rails.
        byroot 2y ago
        I'd say sorbet largely adds to the mud, but to each their own.
        m00x 2y ago
        Some Stripe services are Rails. Having types helps, but it's not a necessity. When I was at Chime we faired very well with just rails and no types.
        fredrikholm 2y ago
        > It's not the fastest language, but it's faster than a lot of dynamic languages. Such as? IME Ruby consistently fall behind, often way behind, nearly all popular languages in "benchmark battles".
        Lio 2y ago
        Python? Ruby with YJIT, JRuby or Truffle Ruby usually beats python code in benchmarks. I haven’t seen a direct comparisons but I wouldn’t be surprised if Truffle Ruby was already faster than either elixir, erlang or php for single threaded CPU bound tasks too. Of course that’s still way behind other languages but it’s still surprisingly good.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Was it ever
    - genewitch 2y ago
      There was a cycle in 2012 or so. I reckon PHP has more lines of code deployed. But C?
  - pier25 2y ago
    It never was "the most popular language in the world". Rails maybe was popular in the US at some point but it was always niche in the rest of the world.
- adamtaylor_13 2y ago
  Rails is experiencing something of a renaissance in recent years. It’s easily one of the most pleasant programming experiences I’ve had in years. All my new projects will be Rails. (What about projects that don’t lend themselves to Rails? I don’t take on such projects ;)
  - cship2 2y ago
    Hmm I thought Crystal was suppose to be faster Ruby? No?
    - mbb70 2y ago
      No one uses Ruby because it is fast. They use it because it is an ergonomic language with a battle-tested package for every webserver based activity you can code up.
      - brigandish 2y ago
        > No one uses Ruby because it is fast. Well, because it isn't. Crystal is an ergonomic language, too, looking a lot like Ruby even beyond a cursory glance. What Ruby has, like any longstanding language, is a large number of packages to help development along, so languages like Crystal have to do a lot of catching up. Looking at the large number of abandoned gems though, I'm not sure it's that big a difference, the most important ones could be targeted. I'm not sure that has any relevance when compared with Python or JS or Go though, they seem to have thriving ecosystems too - is Rails really that much better than the alternatives? I wouldn't know but I highly doubt it.
        ksec 2y ago
        I am still hoping once Crystal stabilise on Windows ( Currently it still feels very much beta ). They could work on making compiling speed faster and incremental compiling.
        the_gastropod 2y ago
        > is Rails really that much better than the alternatives? I really think so. I've _looked_. I've tried all sorts of other web frameworks. And, admittedly, I am most familiar with Rails, so I'm maybe a bit biased. But it's hard to find anything that comes particularly close to the productivity of using Rails. The tooling's great, the ecosystem is great, it's organized well, the documentation is good. It's just... really a pleasant experience to use. Elixir's Phoenix comes pretty close, as does PHP's Laravel, imo. Special shout out for Rust's Loco, too, which is relatively new, but looking potentially promising. I recommend giving Rails an open-minded tire kicking. I think you'll be surprised by how quickly you can get going.
- obiefernandez 2y ago
  Stable mature technology trumps glory.
  - jupp0r 2y ago
    That’s why the JVM has been using JITs since 1993 while it’s a renaissance inspiring marvel for Ruby in 2025.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Unfortunately it is, because too many folks still reach out to pure interpreted languages for full blown applications, instead of plain OS and application scripting tasks.

jupp0r 2y ago

Is it? To me it seems like Ruby is declining [1]. It's still popular for a specific niche of applications, but to me it seems like it's well past its days of glory. Recent improvements are nice, but is a JIT really that exciting technologically in 2025? [1]: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ruby/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ruby/

chris12321 2y ago
Ruby will probably never again be the most popular language in the world, and it doesn't need to be for the people who enjoy it to be excited about the recent improvements in performance, documentation, tooling, ecosystem, and community.
- faizshah 2y ago
  I think ruby can get popular again with the sort of contrarian things Rails is doing like helping developers exit Cloud. There isn’t really a much more productive web dev setup than Rails + your favorite LLM tool. Will take time to earn Gen Z back to Rails though and away from Python/TS or Go/Rust.
  - jimmaswell 2y ago
    My impression is that a Rails app is an unmaintainable dynamically-typed ball of mud that might give you the fast upfront development to get to a market or get funded but will quickly fall apart at scale, e.g. Twitter fail whale. And Ruby is too full of "magic" that quickly makes it too hard to tell what's going on or accidentally make something grossly inefficient if you don't understand the magic, which defeats the point of the convenience. Is this perception outdated, and if so what changed?
    - m00x 2y ago
      Rails can become a ball of mud as much as any other framework can. It's not the fastest language, but it's faster than a lot of dynamic languages. Other than the lack of native types, you can manage pretty large rails apps easily. Chime, Stripe, and Shopify all use RoR and they all have very complex, high-scale financial systems. The strength of your tool is limited to the person who uses the tool.
      - amomchilov 2y ago
        The unrefactorable ball of mud problem is real, which is why both Stripe and Shopify have highly statically typed code bases (via Sorbet). Btw Stripe uses Ruby, but not Rails.
        byroot 2y ago
        I'd say sorbet largely adds to the mud, but to each their own.
        m00x 2y ago
        Some Stripe services are Rails. Having types helps, but it's not a necessity. When I was at Chime we faired very well with just rails and no types.
      - fredrikholm 2y ago
        > It's not the fastest language, but it's faster than a lot of dynamic languages. Such as? IME Ruby consistently fall behind, often way behind, nearly all popular languages in "benchmark battles".
        Lio 2y ago
        Python? Ruby with YJIT, JRuby or Truffle Ruby usually beats python code in benchmarks. I haven’t seen a direct comparisons but I wouldn’t be surprised if Truffle Ruby was already faster than either elixir, erlang or php for single threaded CPU bound tasks too. Of course that’s still way behind other languages but it’s still surprisingly good.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Was it ever
  - genewitch 2y ago
    There was a cycle in 2012 or so. I reckon PHP has more lines of code deployed. But C?
- pier25 2y ago
  It never was "the most popular language in the world". Rails maybe was popular in the US at some point but it was always niche in the rest of the world.
adamtaylor_13 2y ago
Rails is experiencing something of a renaissance in recent years. It’s easily one of the most pleasant programming experiences I’ve had in years. All my new projects will be Rails. (What about projects that don’t lend themselves to Rails? I don’t take on such projects ;)
- cship2 2y ago
  Hmm I thought Crystal was suppose to be faster Ruby? No?
  - mbb70 2y ago
    No one uses Ruby because it is fast. They use it because it is an ergonomic language with a battle-tested package for every webserver based activity you can code up.
    - brigandish 2y ago
      > No one uses Ruby because it is fast. Well, because it isn't. Crystal is an ergonomic language, too, looking a lot like Ruby even beyond a cursory glance. What Ruby has, like any longstanding language, is a large number of packages to help development along, so languages like Crystal have to do a lot of catching up. Looking at the large number of abandoned gems though, I'm not sure it's that big a difference, the most important ones could be targeted. I'm not sure that has any relevance when compared with Python or JS or Go though, they seem to have thriving ecosystems too - is Rails really that much better than the alternatives? I wouldn't know but I highly doubt it.
      - ksec 2y ago
        I am still hoping once Crystal stabilise on Windows ( Currently it still feels very much beta ). They could work on making compiling speed faster and incremental compiling.
      - the_gastropod 2y ago
        > is Rails really that much better than the alternatives? I really think so. I've _looked_. I've tried all sorts of other web frameworks. And, admittedly, I am most familiar with Rails, so I'm maybe a bit biased. But it's hard to find anything that comes particularly close to the productivity of using Rails. The tooling's great, the ecosystem is great, it's organized well, the documentation is good. It's just... really a pleasant experience to use. Elixir's Phoenix comes pretty close, as does PHP's Laravel, imo. Special shout out for Rust's Loco, too, which is relatively new, but looking potentially promising. I recommend giving Rails an open-minded tire kicking. I think you'll be surprised by how quickly you can get going.
obiefernandez 2y ago
Stable mature technology trumps glory.
- jupp0r 2y ago
  That’s why the JVM has been using JITs since 1993 while it’s a renaissance inspiring marvel for Ruby in 2025.
pjmlp 2y ago
Unfortunately it is, because too many folks still reach out to pure interpreted languages for full blown applications, instead of plain OS and application scripting tasks.