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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

> Rails didn't beat PHP and Java for webdev because hipsters think it's cool.

I despise Ruby, PHP, and Java, but there is no objective argument that Ruby has "beaten" PHP or Java. It hasn't even beaten Python. It's tiny compared to the largest back-end languages.

Edit: evidence below:

- Ruby is used by 0 of the top 15 most-visited sites[1] (Twitter doesn't use it anymore). Java is used by 7 of them. PHP is used by 3.

- Job listings on Indeed asking for Ruby skills are far behind Java and PHP[2].

- W3Techs shows that 82.2% of all websites reporting their backend language are using PHP. Ruby is 0.6%.[3]

- Ruby is not even in the ballpark of Java on Github. It has a similar number of repos as PHP.[4]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_languages_used_in_...

2. http://www.codingdojo.com/blog/9-most-in-demand-programming-...

3. https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_langua...

4. http://githut.info/

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As a Ruby developer who gets paid to work with PHP daily, the reason 82.2% of all websites report a PHP backend is because 82.2% of all websites can only afford a PHP backend.

PHP developer salaries lag well behind market average for pretty much the same skillset. The tooling around PHP on the web is a wreck because you get what you pay for. Java isn't that much different -- I see tons of Java jobs I don't want in NYC for $60k wanting 5 years experience.

Who is taking all of these jobs we don't want? More is not necessarily better.

Don't forget the huge number of those 82.2% (is that made up on the spot) websites are likely built on wordpress as well.

~80% is what I've been hearing for a while from various reliable sources so I'd wager it's not far from there.

The real reason PHP is everywhere is because PHP is everywhere. It used to be that the only major host that didn't offer it was Google App Engine but that was resolved ~3 years ago. Since it's everywhere - and the vast majority of people don't care about the technology under the hood - they just choose the first thing that works.

Odds are that's a one-click install of WordPress. They do that. They add their content. Then they move on to their actual business.

Other than software developers, people don't care about the code under their website as long as it a) keeps working and b) no, that's it. Even security is an afterthought for most of these people.

Scala is where it's at for higher paying jobs, I agree PHP and Java are generally low paid because of baggage.

I pitch that as a benefit. You get my expensive skills and when I've built it you get a cheap replacement of me for maintenence.

I didn't mean to suggest people shouldn't write Ruby or that one language is better than the others. I was just stating (and backing up) a fact about web programming. Whether you think it's unfortunate, fortunate, or neutral is up to you.

> Ruby is used by 0 of the top 15 most-visited sites

The majority of projects are not the next twitter or facebook, but something with a limited scope to be done as fast as possible

I think you are interpreting it the wrong way (and I don't even mean that you wrongly equate Ruby with Rails).

If you look at the existing web frameworks, how many of those are RoR clones? That's what I see when somebody says "Rails won".

I completely agree that Rails (and Rails-inspired frameworks, like Laravel and Sails) has won. I was disagreeing specifically with the assertion that Ruby has beaten PHP or Java.

I don't disagree, but your last point is rather misleading as Java on Github also includes pretty much all Android projects.

All of the different data points are imperfect measurements, which is why I attempted to include many angles.

I wouldn't put much weight on GitHub language stats because there's a lot of duplication, and people check in libraries and tooling (usually JS, it seems) that overwhelm whatever language they're actually using.

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