[johntdaly]

I’m a Ruby (and Rails) developer and currently write node.js code. A friend of mine that I worked with that is also a Ruby (and Rails) developer is currently working as a Python developer. I am more than willing to switch back and so is my friend. Ruby (and Rails) was fun to us and that is lacking in our current jobs.

I personally am stunned when I compare the developments in Rails to the developments I see in the node.js community. I loved ActiveJobs and am missing something along that line in node.js and that is not the only example. Since I am a full stack guy I’m also looking forward to what is coming in Rails 7 (making JavaScript simple(r) again) and I’m hopping that Rails will find a way to leverage Ractors in while Ruby continues working on its JIT.

People like us would like to go back to developing in Ruby (and Rails) but we do come with something along the line of 10 years experience in the Industry so no, we are not going to be the cheapest devs out there. And in my case you are going to have about 5 years of Ruby experience and a Year since the last time where I touched Ruby on the Job.

If you can go for multiple Ruby devs I would go with one senior dev that was able to stick around Ruby during the last few years, one returner like me or my friend that has gathered experience outside of Ruby and fill the rest with devs that have one or two years experience any other language that WANT to do Ruby. Nice combination of experience, perspective with the first two (even tough they are going to be more expensive) and some eagerness and enthusiasm for Ruby on a good price point.

Let me be honest. The last years have not been good to the Ruby (and Rails) community. A lot of us left because of golang, node.js, rust, elixir or whatever and so did companies. Ruby had problems and some still exist, especially when it comes to scalability. Problems that most companies will never have but that still hurt us. But the damage has been done. But what we have now is, I think, a good situation for a type of rebirth. A lot of us “switchers” are more then willing to come back but there also needs to be a willingness to not just hire us but also hire more junior devs that want to switch to Ruby and let your senior devs show them the ropes. If enough companies do that I think the Ruby (and Rails) job marked will be back in order in a year or two.

[nicoburns]

I think the main problem for Ruby isn't Node.js, go, Rust, etc. None of those ecosystems have anything comparable to Rails. The problem is Laravel (PHP) and Django (Python) which both offer a comparable (if not better in many ways) experience to Rails with access to much bigger ecosystems.

[johntdaly]

I sort of see where you are coming from but as somebody that used PHP in the past and has left I can’t really get myself to look there.

Now when it comes to Python and Django I’m not so sure. I’ve read a couple of articles where some of the Django users where annoyed that in their opinion there isn’t enough development/new stuff in the Django.

Personally I think the biggest problem is that none of the MVC frameworks in other languages are all that bad and Rails has the problem that it is not better enough for you to have an incentive to learn the language JUST for Rails anymore.

I personally currently see the type of progress I want to see in a backend framework in Rails and in Phoenix (elixir) and I don’t think the changes that are coming are big enough to entice people away from another language just for the framework.

But for me learning Ruby was unexpectedly fun. I come from a Python background, but back then there weren't any Python or Django jobs where I lived at so I did PHP instead. I also learned quickly that JavaScript would be huge so I deep dived into that. When I got fed up with PHP (T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM) I did find a job with Ruby on Rails and Ruby clicked hard, in a way it never had before.

So yea, I don’t think we will win anything based on the Rails framework, but Ruby is fun and the community is a bit weird and that is majorly attractive, especially after you’ve been working as programmer for a couple of years and it becomes important again to Squeeze all the fun out of the job you can.

[gtaylor]

re: Django, it continues to chug along but is at this point a very mature ecosystem. There are larger things in the works (like the async support effort), but they tend to be gradually rolled out.

It's not going to score points for being flashy, but is a healthy tech and community. Hard to beat as a safe default if you don't already have strong preferences and are working in Python!

Plenty of jobs to be had, too.

[danenania]

I haven’t seen Rails devs and projects moving to php or python. They’re moving to javascript/typescript/node, go, and rust mainly, for some combination of better integration with the frontend stack, static types, and scalability/performance.

I think Rails was a victim of its own success. It’s always been great for getting projects started quickly, but now many of the early crop of “agile” startups have grown up and need solutions to large project issues that Rails doesn’t have great answers for.

[Zababa]

> None of those ecosystems have anything comparable to Rails.

Rails has nothing comparable to React or the performance of Go. Laravel and Python are just alternatives to Rails, which suffers from the same issues, although Python has a lot of C/C++/Fortran bindings for some heavy stuff.