

10 reasons not to use Ruby - dpaluy
http://www.zohararad.com/2012/11/16/10-reasons-not-to-use-ruby/

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jtdowney
"Java and PHP have been around long before Ruby."

It seems like they are confusing Ruby and Rails in the first point. PHP, Java,
and Ruby were all first publicly released in 1995.

From their respective Wikipedia articles:

"Lerdorf released PHP/FI as "Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) version 1.0"
publicly on June 8, 1995"

"Sun Microsystems released the first public implementation as Java 1.0 in
1995."

"The first public release of Ruby 0.95 was announced on Japanese domestic
newsgroups on December 21, 1995."

~~~
mercurial
That's reinforced by point #6 ("Ruby is too opiniated"). Ruby is not
particularly opiniated and the community seemed to have much less attachment
to doing things the idiomatic way than Python folks.

~~~
aroberge
Why this attack on "Python folks" when the comment you replied to never
mentioned Python? Got a bee on your bonnet?

~~~
mercurial
It's funny you interpret that as an attack. What do you perceive as hostile in
my post? It's just part of the Python philosophy. Whether you consider this a
good or a bad thing is up to you. Personally, I consider it an advantage,
though I used to think different.

It is true the blog post does not mention Python. However, if you should pick
one "opiniated" language in the same niche as Ruby, this is the one most
people would pick.

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olaf
Like Php and other languages, Ruby has one severe sickness: “One thing Perl’s
my() gives you is a guarantee that you aren’t stomping on a given variable.
For example, if I’m in a block of code in Perl and want to use a private
variable I can just declare it with my() and never have to worry about whether
a variable of that name existed previously. In Ruby, if you are inside of a
block and want a private variable, you need to choose a variable name that has
never been used before. I don’t want to have to hold the entire symbol table
in my head!! What can I do?” source: [http://gabrito.com/post/ruby-needs-my-
for-variable-declarati...](http://gabrito.com/post/ruby-needs-my-for-variable-
declaration-and-scoping)

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lmm
The ruby "community" is visibly a lot more snobbish and condescending than
other languages of similar power (python); the whole ruby culture seems to be
this toxic one where you're respected in proportion to how rude you are. The
whole tone of this article is a good example, actually. Note the complete
denial that there might be tradeoffs and legitimate reasons not to use ruby;
rather, anyone not using it must be an idiot.

~~~
valdiorn
Honestly, the community around Ruby (Rails, actually) is one of the main
reasons why I haven't given Ruby more of a chance. It seems like everywhere I
look, people act like they're too good for me, and I'm probably too stupid to
ever be a good Rails programmer.

... and I use Windows as my main OS, so I must be square! I'm not "worthy" of
Ruby, and anything bad I have to say about Ruby just proves their point. Many
articles I read have this condescending tone, this article being a prime
example.

Even an article about why Ruby is not ideal for some scenarios is turned into
a "you're wrong, Ruby is best" rant.

~~~
alinajaf
> It seems like everywhere I look, people act like they're too good for me,
> and I'm probably too stupid to ever be a good Rails programmer.

Where did you look? Could you introduce me to some of these people that made
you feel stupid?

I've been doing ruby for a relatively short amount of time and I've found the
community to be a hell of a lot nicer than most programming/technical
communities. Where do I have to look to find these ruby assholes?

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blacktulip
As a Ruby learner I have to say this post isn't helping.

Yes Ruby is a great language. That's why I learn it in the first place. But a
post like this make people think the author is "hardselling" the language. And
good things do not need to be hardsold. Ruby itself isn't opinionated. But
this post is. In fact if I know nothing about Ruby and its community, I would
have drawn the conclusion from this post that Rubyists are arrogant and
opinionated.

People really should not try to convert other's language usage. If the
language itself can not convince a person, neither can you.

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alexyoung
This reads a lot like blog posts from back when Rails was catching on (~2005).
I thought we'd moved on since then: I genuinely wanted to read an intelligent
critique on the Ruby language.

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rohitarondekar
What exactly was the point of this blog post? Quite a few of those reasons are
valid and none of the arguments against the 10 reasons are good. It reads like
"OMG BUT RUBY! MY PRECIOUS!!1"

~~~
scrrr
People like to talk about their hobbies (and jobs)! Nothing wrong with writing
down a few bullets about a language, especially since programmers like to
argue about which language is the best.

~~~
mercurial
I assume it depends what you're going for. If you mean to make a fun blog
post, maybe (though in my mind it's taking itself too seriously for that,
despite occasional jokes, and it comes off as immature instead). If you are
trying to convince people to switch languages, and flat-out refuse to
acknowledge your favorite language and ecosystem has any weakness, not so
much.

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chris_wot
_6\. Ruby is too opinionated and takes away my freedom to do things my way_

Convention over configuration is mainly a rails thing, right? When I was
learning Ruby there were quite a few ways of going about accomplishing your
task, only there was often a _more efficient_ way of doing things (e.g. using
blocks instead of loops, etc.)

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beothorn
His arguments are so generic that you can change Ruby with any other language
and a lot of his arguments still work.

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scrrr
Reason #11: Ruby isn't fun. ;)

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savvykang
This isn't constructive topic. Don't feed the troll.

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noeleon
subtext: ruby is awesome, i'm a massive fanboy and you should use it.

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kodisha
omg why :/

