[lmm]

> I suppose if Shopify / Github have heavy algorithmic work they do do it in Ruby.

I'd be surprised. I'd expect they'll implement it in something else and interface to it in Ruby.

> I think you have a somewhat different understanding than I do on what software devs do most days. And it doesn't matter if it's php/ruby or java/c++, so many of us, I believe, just glue pieces of business logic together. If you happen to have a problem that's purely algorithmic (let's say finding the shortest path on some map), the first thing most devs I know would do is look for an open source solution for that (and if one doesn't exist in Ruby, you can always wrap it in a Ruby API). That's what I know about most of software engineering

I think most software devs spend 95% of their time plumbing together existing things. But I think there's actually a very big difference between that and spending 100% of your time just plumbing together existing things. I wouldn't expect to do serious algorithmic work every day or even every month, but I think if a company is truly technical then it should be doing something that goes a little beyond what's in pre-packaged libraries, and that's often the most fulfilling part of the job.