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Comment by jimmyjames | Hacker News Reader

1) Please don't swear, it makes you look like an angry teenager and it doesn't help your message. 2) The fact that Rails has 900 bugs is appalling, but don't blame it on the community, blame it on the team working on it 3) The Rails core team is working on it because they wanted to scratch an itch, who are you to tell me what itch I should be scratching? 4) I'm getting tired of the arrogance displayed by Rails people (core team and community alike). We understand you had a shot at becoming the Next Big Thing a few years ago. It never happened, you're now reduced to a niche and you're trying to blame it on others with this kind of pathetic call to action.

The world has moved on from Rails, enjoy your niche and stop trying to get others to fix your mess (900 tickets... seriously?!?).

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I agree about the swearing - it's a crutch.

However, "reduced to a niche" seems a bit much. Rails continues to gain in popularity as far as I can tell, and in terms of the web, most certainly was The Next Big Thing, since everyone set about trying to copy it. It's not every day that someone writes a platform good enough to cause that many people to jump away from their existing languages and infrastructure.

1) I swear only to convey emotion. I feel it helps my message, but I realize that other people do not feel that way. I respect your opinion. 2) The team working on it is too closed. They need dedicated people to clean up the "mess" left behind, to act as a kind of a Gatekeeper between core and community. 3) If you're in the Rails community it should be you who is scratching "the itch". Contribute 15 minutes of time a week to doing something beneficial to the community. Personally, I've taken to keeping a list of all the people I've helped and I'm going to put them on my wall as sort of an "achievement tracker" in the form of sticky notes. These are the people who's development lives I have added to, and this is one way I can silently thank them for using Rails. 4) Rails community is still "exploding" and I think with the release and associated press (read: circlejerking) there will be a lot more newcomers to Rails.

To your final, unnumbered point: I disagree. There are still quite a few large sites that are using Rails and if "the world" had moved on, wouldn't have these sites also? I will not deny there being decent competition with Rails. There definitely is "solutions" that do it as well or (and this is something you won't hear a Ruby guy saying often, so please enjoy it whilst it lasts) better than Rails. Django, for instance, I hear is getting more popular and some people are jumping ship from Rails to it. Rails will, for the (slightly biased) foreseeable future, will still be a "big player" in the web-application world.

Rails has been "exploding" for years now, but it's still absolutely nowhere to be found in most job boards, so for all intents and purposes, it is a niche.

I'm glad to see it grow because it contains a lot of very interesting ideas, but at this point, it's pretty clear that it will never become as popular as other "web frameworks" (using the term loosely here) such as PHP, ASP.net or some of the many Java frameworks...

it's still absolutely nowhere to be found in most job boards

Strange, considering there are always Rails jobs on craigslist in every major city and on all startup boards. Hell, I don't even actively seek out contract work and have offers on a weekly basis (in person, not even counting online) from people looking for Ruby/Python web development.

PHP, ASP.net or some of the many Java frameworks...

So? You put stock in argumentum ad populum? Hell, why not rip on Django while you're at it, considering there are far fewer Django jobs than Rails jobs? Nevermind the fact that despite Python and Ruby web frameworks being less widely used than PHP overall they are still very strongly represented among the most successful and innovative web projects of the past decade.

<shrug>

Feel free to use whatever metric makes you feel good, all I'm saying is that the number of jobs for Java, PHP, Javascript and ASP.net (yes, even Basic) absolutely dwarfs those for Ruby on Rails.

So, by lumping together four (or five) different platforms, you manage to come up with a number that is larger than those using Rails? That's not entirely surprising.

You're also counting Javascript, which I find odd. Javascript is used in ALL of those platforms, so including it in an argument is extremely unfair. I do some Javascript programming from time to time, but I also spend a fair amount of time in Rails. When I was doing PHP and ASP.net programming, we were also using Javascript. So, yeah, there are going to be more jobs for front-end developers than those who program in some back-end platform, because all sites need some sort of a front-end (excluding some project that's purely an API).

There's also a dilution of programming jobs for the aforementioned platforms, from my experience. Finding a job doing Rails seems to be fairly easy as, even though it was the "next big thing", the average programmer felt better sticking with Java, PHP, or ASP.net. There are way more Java programmers than there are Rails programmers, but it seems the ratio of programmers to programming jobs seems to be more in the favor of Rails.

    So, by lumping together four (or five) different platforms, you manage to come up with a number that is larger than those using Rails? That's not entirely surprising.

I think he meant "either of these by itself".

I agree with that last point, I have a few friends doing consulting for RoR and they don't seem to have any problems finding work, but then again, neither do COBOL developers.

RoR developers are as hard to find as RoR jobs, so I stand by my initial claim that RoR has become a niche framework.

What is your point? Based on your straight 0 ratings in this thread, hating on Rails is also a niche. So what?

If you believe Hiring is Obsolete (http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html), then the jobs argument is pointless. If you don't, then you can always remember the Python Paradox (http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html) the language to learn, if you want to get a good job, is a language that people don't learn merely to get a job.

Fuck right off. You are the person who is pigeon-holing people into categories based on the words they choose to use. Should one also need sit up straight and wear a pressed shirt to be taken 'seriously' by you? :P

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