Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails or Node.js/MEAN more in demand? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Ruby on Rails or Node.js/MEAN more in demand?

7 pointsgamechangr19 comments

I have exposure to both Rails and Node.js and don't know enough about the job market/trends to know which one I should put a 1,000 hours into?

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I thought the E in MEAN was for the Express server. [1] I think they both have a strong hold on the market nowadays in terms of usage.

[1]: http://mean.io/#!/

Good point = upvote, I've heard it both ways, but yeah they both have a role to play.

Which way would you vote, if you needed to prioritize?

Rails has been around longer and will have a lot available for it. Both have huge communities, but I would say Rails is more mature and widely adopted as of now.

I would think Python is pretty popular and more versatile than either of those 2 options.

Given the fact that it is used beyond web programming to do just about everything where performance doesn't matter.

Python is more popular in the sense that it is often listed as a "nice to have" on many resumes, and is also often used by non-developers like DBAs, SysAdmins, biologists, & mathematicians.

But from a "build a new product" perspective, Python is losing to Ruby, Go, and JavaScript.

This is just untrue. Plenty of high performance products are Python based, just look at Instagram, Dropbox etc.

Instagram yes, but Dropbox is/has migrated to Go. So has disqus.

So your point is that python can make your first billion but you need Go to make your second billion?

My recommendation for you is to work on your reading comprehension skills since they are severely lacking.

I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just thought your example proved that Python can be used for high performance apps. Dropbox once ran on it. They might have had problems but it was after they already experienced success.

My original comment was "Python is losing to Ruby, Go, and JavaScript". From purely a job market perspective I can't see why'd you'd invest time in learning Python over Ruby and JS. For non-blocking I/O people are going with JS instead of things like tornado. From a pure performance perspective, Go wins out over most/all interpreted languages.

Python is only winning a few niche markets like numerical computation, statistics. and biology...which most developers are not in. If you are trying to learn a language to get a job, you're probably not wanting to look at small niche industries to work in.

Of course you can build billion dollar companies in any language, but that wasn't the question or comment being discussed.

Today is Node.js with Angular, React, Ember. But I think Mongo was a little stagnant, is not what it used regarding its use and popularity.

Thanks... I have been thinking that the Javascript community is huge, much much larger than the Rails community. Many of the larger companies just end up writing their libraries in Javascript, then the Ruby on Rails world waits for a Rubyist to write a gem that ports their library to Rails. Again, you use Javascript when you do library integrations.

Node.js ( MEAN - including Mongo, Ember, Angular)

MEAN = Mongo, Express, Angular, Node

Your thinking is flawed. But if you just want to chase the current job market then put your hours into ASP.NET.

I appreciate the feedback and will upvote this.

I understand that I really need to learn to program by picking "any" language.

I get paid a good six figure salary right now and I am not in programming. I would like to "lessen" the transition time to become a developer by paying a tutor and getting a couple hundred hours into learning and then quit my job and make the jump.

Ruby on Rails

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