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Good morning! I just got in from California yesterday, so it feels like 6 a.m. to me right now. This coffee is delicious, but I think I'm going to trade it real fast.
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Oh yeah, all right. This is the 2015 Results party.
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Who here has taken my Ruby survey before? Okay, fair number.
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I'm going to start talking about my favorite subject, which is myself.
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I made this thing called Hamill. We'll get to that later when I discuss some of the statistics.
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I also used to work with the Wikimedia Foundation, where I was the CTO. I built and ran the mobile site for about three years, and they've since made significant improvements.
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Many people are familiar with my earlier work. I'm the original creator of Sass and used to run the Libsass project as well.
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I’m less involved with that nowadays due to others taking over the project, and I'm grateful to them for their contributions.
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Sass has been a bit of a mixed bag in the Ruby community because it requires some setup, but Node developers seem to love it.
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If you use Ember, you might be using Sass under the hood. I also wrote a book with my husband, organized a conference, and served as the CEO of our consulting company, Rarebit.
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We also run a company called Wordset and have a podcast called "We Have a Microphone." Is that not enough?
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Oh, I'm also an artist! Speaking of art, this is funny: as soon as the elevator doors open in this hotel, you see a piece of art hung on the wall. It's for sale for $1,700 and depicts something like 'The Old Man and the Sea' or perhaps a ghost of Ponce de Leon. It's rather awesome, yet they hung it sideways.
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So, go enjoy that if you have a room key! Actually, I’ll just take a group later; we can all laugh at it together.
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Oh, sorry, did I not have enough logos? Here is the logo section.
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Let’s take a little trip back to the past, all the way to the year 2008.
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It was so long ago! New Jersey on that year was the first to apologize for slavery in the North.
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Also in 2008, a Grammy was won by a young artist who famously did not want to go to rehab. That's a little sad when you think about it.
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For me, I remember the gymnastics team winning a bronze in Beijing, which stands out more to me than other events.
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I also remember when Rails 2.1 was released.
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Back then, JavaScript wasn't considered much of a thing; it was kind of a thing, but not really.
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A small company was founded in 2008 that you might have heard of.
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This year, I decided that the Ruby community was actually a significant entity; companies like Cash Rocket were around, and more substantial organizations started using Rails.
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All of us in the Ruby community often attended conferences, but it was quite different to find out what people were actually using and who they were.
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So, I built this survey to really understand those things. However, I coded the initial version rather poorly.
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I didn't tie the two votes together, which made it difficult to run analytics on correlations.
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A total of 1,200 people took my first survey, which I thought was a success.
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As a side note, I want to thank my friend for styling the page; unfortunately, the Wayback Machine seems to have lost the styling.
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I just randomly named it after myself because, well, why not? It was a big hit!
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1200 people filled out the first question; that was the extent of the actual analytics I could run.
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After the site went down about six months later, due to a DNS issue, I started getting comments like why it turned into Shameless self-promotion.
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I had to explain when you took it; it was clearly labeled 'The Hampton's Ruby Survey', so it wasn't really a shameless plug.
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I thought I'd bring that up because it’s interesting how hurtful comments can affect your feelings.
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So, I did it for a couple of years, then I started to properly correlate the votes for entries.
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I would have run it previously but didn’t have the right interactions.
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This is how many people took it over the years. The first year, about 1,200 people participated.
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From then on, participation was heavily influenced by how well I promoted it.
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In some years, if I got the right retweets at the right time, I experienced a surge, while in others, less so.
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Unfortunately, I have missed years in here as I was the CTO of a fast-growing startup.
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So, officially, eight years have passed, but only six surveys happened.
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Because of the varied data, I'm only using four surveys this time for reporting.
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Please, if you're a statistics nerd, I’ve likely ruined statistics in this survey; there are no standard deviation calculations.
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I'm merely trying to ensure that I've used data points that had a decent sample size.
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This is where it is not scientifically appropriate; I just make a point.
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So, do you know who has read this book?
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Yes, a good number of you! This is the Pickaxe book. Back in the old Ruby days, there wasn't decent online documentation.
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So if it was 2004 and you wanted to learn Ruby, you had to learn some Japanese.
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Dave Thomas came along and worked hard to create this book, which should have ideally been the official Ruby documentation.
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This book is ten years old now, and back then, it provided a significant insight into how Ruby works.
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The first question I asked back then was about having read the Pickaxe book. Time has passed, and its value has diminished due to the existence of official documentation.
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About 75% of people had read the book back in its early days.
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Now, I suspect most of those respondents are the old-timers from the early community.
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Let's pivot to a discussion about demographics.
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I ask this in a way that I want to be sensitive about the implications.
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Over the years, the number of women in the Ruby Community has averaged around 4-5%.
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There is a growing number of respondents who identify as non-binary or prefer not to say.
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As for men, it's business as usual.
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This year's survey also included a question about job titles. Early on, many people identified as 'Rubyists'.
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The results show that this year, almost 50% of respondents identified as managers or team leaders.
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This is surprising. I wonder if this reflects a bias in the sampled demographics.
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That's especially relevant because I'm reaching out to my experienced Ruby community friends.
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More on that: 0.4% identify as 'Rubyist'. There are more QA engineers than self-identified Rubyists now.
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44.6% of respondents have attended a conference this year.
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That suggests a strong commitment to community engagement.
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This year, I also tracked language skills. 47% fluently speak more than one language.
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74% are using English in their workplace, with 58% learning English as their first language.
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This reveals a significant linguistic diversity within the Ruby community.
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I plan to analyze IP addresses from survey responses to ascertain geographical insights.
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As for the open-source contributions, 83% have submitted code to an open-source project at some point.
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However, the follow-up question on participation in the last year had a lower percentage.
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Another interesting topic is employment type.
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There's been a significant shift towards self-employment and flexible work arrangements over time.
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We're seeing more people with traditional full-time desk jobs, contrary to earlier trends.
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Back in the days of Ruby's initial rise, many believed everyone would be an entrepreneur.
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That hasn't quite turned out as expected. In truth, many larger companies now embrace Rails.
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In the early days, no big company wanted to adopt Rails; its legitimacy has grown immensely since.
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Next question: why do we get many comments about testing frameworks each year?
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It’s an interesting observation. Almost 50% of respondents identified as atheists with around 20% identifying as agnostic.
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This year, it turns out that around 66% of Rubyists identify as some form of non-believer.
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Monotheists constitute about 20%, which is consistent with agnostics.
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The responses highlight a broad diversity of beliefs, allowing for interesting discussions.
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Now, let's move on to the second most important question for any developer: what text editor do you use?
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From what I've seen, Vim usage has significantly grown over the years.
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I've tried adding Vim to my workflow, yet it certainly has a learning curve.
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Emacs has lost significant ground over the years, yet it remains a niche choice.
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TextMate has remained a reliable choice among Ruby developers.
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Sublime Text has gained popularity, particularly among former TextMate users.
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On the other hand, we have Atom also gaining traction within the community.
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Let's shift topics a bit; I hope you don't hate me already.
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The most important question remains: do you use Sass?
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A resounding 'yes' from approximately 77% of respondents. I'll share precise numbers later.
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Another entertaining question I've asked since 2008: what are your thoughts on Hamill?
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There are strong opinions on either side; it's fascinating!
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About 50% of the respondents currently use Hamill, though I expected fewer.
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A lot of comments fall in the 'don't care' or 'don't use it' categories.
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It's also crucial to speak about Ruby—the survey's namesake!
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What version of Ruby are you using? It's one of the most heartening diagrams I've made.
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I know many projects struggle with version uptake, and it's heartening to see Ruby versions being adopted.
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It produces a beautiful gradient on the chart.
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What framework are you using? Obviously, Rails dominates.
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Over 75% of Ruby developers still consider Rails the leading web framework.
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In an interesting historical point, Merb once attempted to revolutionize Rails but has since been merged.
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Sinatra has consistently maintained its audience compared to 20%.
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We've seen an upward trend, particularly as Rails continues to remain relevant.
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What interpreter do you use for Ruby? Matt's Ruby interpreter is the dominant choice.
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JRuby has maintained a steady presence over the years.
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Rubinius started strong but hasn't managed to gain traction as a serious project.
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IronRuby seems to have faded from relevance after its initial excitement.
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If there are any significant projects I missed, I apologize; there's just so much going on.
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Test frameworks are a topic of interest; Test Unit was once the default standard.
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Now it appears that MiniTest is what most people are utilizing.
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RSpec has gained immense popularity, and I suspect it's been the primary choice.
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Cucumber seems to have diminished significantly, which surprised me given its past prominence.
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What web server do you recommend? Mongrel has lost a substantial amount of ground.
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Passenger, too, isn't in a good place, which is curious since I've been switching to it.
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It’s essential to see those declines over time within the community.
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Axel has remained stable, while Unicorn jumped into view.
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Another surprise, Puma has also quickly captured attention.
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Regarding Nosql databases, it's interesting to see the statistics.
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There are questions regarding the popularity of different databases.
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Voldemort showed a decent uptake while still remaining niche.
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MongoDB was pretty significant in its use case.
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Elasticsearch was a new entry this year, and it knocked out many competitors.
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This change is likely due to its dual applicability as both a search tool and primary data store.
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Every year, I also ask about JavaScript frameworks and their evolution.
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It’s essential to discuss JavaScript in terms of its historical context and the choices available.
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The early days were riddled with copy-paste code that was very inconsistent.
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I recall a time when JavaScript was primarily about complicated hacks just to work across browsers.
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Then came the game-changers like Sam Stevenson, who helped shape modern standards.
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The rise of frameworks like Prototype and jQuery has transformed how we handle JavaScript.
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In 2008, I started asking which framework people were using, and it was illuminating.
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Prototype was prominent when I first queried it, while jQuery was also emerging.
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Shifting my focus back to MVC frameworks: the survey has asked who uses what.
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XJS is a newer player to the game, while Knockout.js and Backbone have shown drastic declines.
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React, however, has made a substantial entrance into the arena.
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A significant change in JavaScript usage patterns reflects how the landscape has evolved.
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Now back to Ruby, I want to focus on the usage trends seen over the years.
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The community's optimism seems to be reflected in survey responses.
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This year, 86% of respondents believe that the Ruby community is on the right track.
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Overall sentiment from Rubyists remains positive.
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Finally, the consensus indicates a strong affinity towards Sass.
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I will ensure to provide clarity on data trends at a later point.
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Thank you all for your engagement in this exploration of Ruby.