[tferris]

> 1. Probably 75% of new startups are using rails, and rightly so. You'd need a good reason not to use it. "Rusty slow legacy systems" - what nonsense.

75%? Evidence? You are the one who is talking nonsense, sorry to be direct and getting on Reddit level but you started.

> 2. If there was a better language, they'd probably learn it? Or are you trying to insinuate Ruby programmers are dumb/lazy?

Do I really have to tell you? Instead of doing some research Rubyists still defend their old tech (like you do now).

> 3. If you are blaming your slow web page on Ruby, you're doing it wrong.

Yes you are right, and now get back in your comfort zone and code some slow web services.

[mosselman]

Firstly (Disclaimer) I am a Rails developer, I choose to be one right now, until (if) I find that my efforts are better spent elsewhere.

I agree with tferris to some extent. Those arguments are nonsensical to say the least.

This might be a feeling, I am not one to shout random feeling-based percentages, but I feel that people, in general, not just HN, don't realise that you can just claim things in this way. 75%? Where does that come from?

Also, the second argument is complete rubbish. By this logic anything that the masses do is better? So Earth was flat at some point in time? And yes, I think that people ARE lazy, as we should be, why use a framework otherwise? But some people are just stuck in the before mentioned comfort zone. Evidence is the popularity of Rails clones in PHP (or at least attempts at). Why not just learn Ruby and use Rails? => Fear of learning new programming languages and being new at something?

Third argument is right to a certain extent. If you need to invest a lot of trouble to make some slow code (which Ruby tends to be) faster, at what point do you choose to just use something faster? Where is the line; break even point?

I use Ruby at the moment too, but you have to remain critical and even more so, you need to reflect on your own ways of reasoning.

[venus]

> By this logic anything that the masses do is better?

Yeah, I could have worded that better. The OP said:

  Why people still use Ruby?
  2. Because they do not want to learn new languages and can stay in their comfort zone

Which implies that a reason people are "still" using ruby is that they are too lazy to switch to one of the new, "better" languages or frameworks. I was just trying to point out, maybe they haven't identified that there's a better language or framework yet? I am not aware of any obviously superior alternative and if I found one, of course I'd start learning about it.

75% was a wild-ass guess which I nonetheless believe is pretty much right. But maybe it's 50%. Who knows. The point was, rails devs are not solely working to maintain "rusty slow legacy systems".

> I am a Rails developer, I choose to be one right now, until (if) I find that my efforts are better spent elsewhere.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[i386]

Well you should use a framework not because you are lazy but because there are a million other actually important things you should be doing than implementing state for HTTP for the billionth time.

[mosselman]

Potato potato.

You are a 'glass-half-empty' interpreter of the word 'lazy'.

Easy syntax, DRY, etc. are things that are good because they limit you to waste time on trivial things, like you said. They stop you from reinventing the wheel.

I call that (positive) laziness. You can call it whatever you want of course. It still boils down to the same thing.

I have worked at places where programmers were willing to write thousands of lines of code, often copy-pasting big chunks and just replacing a few variable names. Needless to say, I didn't want to work there for very long. There is often no way to convince those kinds of programmers to stop and think about logic or technical design. They feel that they could just as easily write a few hundred lines again and again. Me, and my others, feel that you shouldn't repeat yourself in code and should limit your day-to-day efforts by writing reusable code, etc, etc. I don't need to tell you of course.

[revskill]

Do you mean PHP languague ?

[d4mi3n]

Having spent a good year at the 2012 batch at the 500 Startups office, I can safely say that the majority (>60%) of the guys I spoke with there were working off some sort of rails stack.

[venus]

> 75%? Evidence?

None really, just the startups at an incubator-type place near me. Might not be 75% but it's certainly a big chunk and probably the majority.

[timc3]

So no evidence whatsoever.

No java, JavaScript, python, php, perl, c++, c#, erlang?

[simonw]

My hunch is that it's pretty rare to see a new startup using Perl, Erlang, C++ or even Java.

[PommeDeTerre]

It depends a lot on the business and the sector. Serious startups in fields like biotech, nanotech and finance are still very commonly using languages like C, C++, Java and F# for new projects.

These are companies creating software that'll likely still be around and in use 10 or 20 years from now, rather than web startups who will likely not survive more than a couple of years, or will rewrite their software time and time again using whatever the current over-hyped language/platform of the day is.

[draegtun]

Also they don't get the attention the hot languages get.

However there are some Perl startups, for eg: Lokku, Blekko, Moonfruit, DuckDuckGo, CareerJet & Adzuna

[eCa]

This is one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4461427