00:00:04.440
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.
00:00:25.260
Oh yeah, all right. This is the 2015 Results party.
00:00:34.739
Who here has taken my Ruby survey before? Okay, fair number.
00:00:41.399
I'm going to start talking about my favorite subject, which is myself.
00:00:48.300
I made this thing called Hamill. We'll get to that later when I discuss some of the statistics.
00:00:56.340
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.
00:01:03.059
Many people are familiar with my earlier work. I'm the original creator of Sass and used to run the Libsass project as well.
00:01:09.060
I’m less involved with that nowadays due to others taking over the project, and I'm grateful to them for their contributions.
00:01:15.840
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.
00:01:22.439
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.
00:01:34.500
We also run a company called Wordset and have a podcast called "We Have a Microphone." Is that not enough?
00:01:40.140
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.
00:01:52.460
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.
00:02:02.939
Oh, sorry, did I not have enough logos? Here is the logo section.
00:02:08.819
Let’s take a little trip back to the past, all the way to the year 2008.
00:02:14.099
It was so long ago! New Jersey on that year was the first to apologize for slavery in the North.
00:02:24.180
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.
00:02:30.060
For me, I remember the gymnastics team winning a bronze in Beijing, which stands out more to me than other events.
00:02:38.220
I also remember when Rails 2.1 was released.
00:02:43.380
Back then, JavaScript wasn't considered much of a thing; it was kind of a thing, but not really.
00:02:50.640
A small company was founded in 2008 that you might have heard of.
00:02:56.460
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.
00:03:05.820
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.
00:03:11.640
So, I built this survey to really understand those things. However, I coded the initial version rather poorly.
00:03:17.199
I didn't tie the two votes together, which made it difficult to run analytics on correlations.
00:03:25.560
A total of 1,200 people took my first survey, which I thought was a success.
00:03:31.139
As a side note, I want to thank my friend for styling the page; unfortunately, the Wayback Machine seems to have lost the styling.
00:03:37.139
I just randomly named it after myself because, well, why not? It was a big hit!
00:03:43.080
1200 people filled out the first question; that was the extent of the actual analytics I could run.
00:03:50.040
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.
00:03:56.460
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.
00:04:02.700
I thought I'd bring that up because it’s interesting how hurtful comments can affect your feelings.
00:04:08.520
So, I did it for a couple of years, then I started to properly correlate the votes for entries.
00:04:14.740
I would have run it previously but didn’t have the right interactions.
00:04:22.620
This is how many people took it over the years. The first year, about 1,200 people participated.
00:04:29.580
From then on, participation was heavily influenced by how well I promoted it.
00:04:36.540
In some years, if I got the right retweets at the right time, I experienced a surge, while in others, less so.
00:04:42.700
Unfortunately, I have missed years in here as I was the CTO of a fast-growing startup.
00:04:50.640
So, officially, eight years have passed, but only six surveys happened.
00:04:57.040
Because of the varied data, I'm only using four surveys this time for reporting.
00:05:03.660
Please, if you're a statistics nerd, I’ve likely ruined statistics in this survey; there are no standard deviation calculations.
00:05:10.740
I'm merely trying to ensure that I've used data points that had a decent sample size.
00:05:18.060
This is where it is not scientifically appropriate; I just make a point.
00:05:25.660
So, do you know who has read this book?
00:05:31.539
Yes, a good number of you! This is the Pickaxe book. Back in the old Ruby days, there wasn't decent online documentation.
00:05:38.640
So if it was 2004 and you wanted to learn Ruby, you had to learn some Japanese.
00:05:44.700
Dave Thomas came along and worked hard to create this book, which should have ideally been the official Ruby documentation.
00:05:51.540
This book is ten years old now, and back then, it provided a significant insight into how Ruby works.
00:05:59.460
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.
00:06:08.040
About 75% of people had read the book back in its early days.
00:06:15.300
Now, I suspect most of those respondents are the old-timers from the early community.
00:06:23.700
Let's pivot to a discussion about demographics.
00:06:29.640
I ask this in a way that I want to be sensitive about the implications.
00:06:35.760
Over the years, the number of women in the Ruby Community has averaged around 4-5%.
00:06:40.320
There is a growing number of respondents who identify as non-binary or prefer not to say.
00:06:47.540
As for men, it's business as usual.
00:06:53.220
This year's survey also included a question about job titles. Early on, many people identified as 'Rubyists'.
00:06:59.760
The results show that this year, almost 50% of respondents identified as managers or team leaders.
00:07:07.440
This is surprising. I wonder if this reflects a bias in the sampled demographics.
00:07:13.579
That's especially relevant because I'm reaching out to my experienced Ruby community friends.
00:07:19.420
More on that: 0.4% identify as 'Rubyist'. There are more QA engineers than self-identified Rubyists now.
00:07:27.420
44.6% of respondents have attended a conference this year.
00:07:33.300
That suggests a strong commitment to community engagement.
00:07:40.660
This year, I also tracked language skills. 47% fluently speak more than one language.
00:07:47.100
74% are using English in their workplace, with 58% learning English as their first language.
00:07:54.740
This reveals a significant linguistic diversity within the Ruby community.
00:08:01.380
I plan to analyze IP addresses from survey responses to ascertain geographical insights.
00:08:09.340
As for the open-source contributions, 83% have submitted code to an open-source project at some point.
00:08:16.000
However, the follow-up question on participation in the last year had a lower percentage.
00:08:22.780
Another interesting topic is employment type.
00:08:29.679
There's been a significant shift towards self-employment and flexible work arrangements over time.
00:08:35.780
We're seeing more people with traditional full-time desk jobs, contrary to earlier trends.
00:08:42.220
Back in the days of Ruby's initial rise, many believed everyone would be an entrepreneur.
00:08:47.700
That hasn't quite turned out as expected. In truth, many larger companies now embrace Rails.
00:08:54.300
In the early days, no big company wanted to adopt Rails; its legitimacy has grown immensely since.
00:09:00.900
Next question: why do we get many comments about testing frameworks each year?
00:09:08.220
It’s an interesting observation. Almost 50% of respondents identified as atheists with around 20% identifying as agnostic.
00:09:15.150
This year, it turns out that around 66% of Rubyists identify as some form of non-believer.
00:09:23.940
Monotheists constitute about 20%, which is consistent with agnostics.
00:09:30.060
The responses highlight a broad diversity of beliefs, allowing for interesting discussions.
00:09:36.180
Now, let's move on to the second most important question for any developer: what text editor do you use?
00:09:43.740
From what I've seen, Vim usage has significantly grown over the years.
00:09:50.819
I've tried adding Vim to my workflow, yet it certainly has a learning curve.
00:09:56.460
Emacs has lost significant ground over the years, yet it remains a niche choice.
00:10:02.640
TextMate has remained a reliable choice among Ruby developers.
00:10:09.180
Sublime Text has gained popularity, particularly among former TextMate users.
00:10:14.280
On the other hand, we have Atom also gaining traction within the community.
00:10:18.900
Let's shift topics a bit; I hope you don't hate me already.
00:10:23.520
The most important question remains: do you use Sass?
00:10:27.650
A resounding 'yes' from approximately 77% of respondents. I'll share precise numbers later.
00:10:35.160
Another entertaining question I've asked since 2008: what are your thoughts on Hamill?
00:10:42.600
There are strong opinions on either side; it's fascinating!
00:10:50.060
About 50% of the respondents currently use Hamill, though I expected fewer.
00:10:56.279
A lot of comments fall in the 'don't care' or 'don't use it' categories.
00:11:02.260
It's also crucial to speak about Ruby—the survey's namesake!
00:11:08.480
What version of Ruby are you using? It's one of the most heartening diagrams I've made.
00:11:14.060
I know many projects struggle with version uptake, and it's heartening to see Ruby versions being adopted.
00:11:21.420
It produces a beautiful gradient on the chart.
00:11:27.940
What framework are you using? Obviously, Rails dominates.
00:11:33.740
Over 75% of Ruby developers still consider Rails the leading web framework.
00:11:41.880
In an interesting historical point, Merb once attempted to revolutionize Rails but has since been merged.
00:11:49.020
Sinatra has consistently maintained its audience compared to 20%.
00:11:56.520
We've seen an upward trend, particularly as Rails continues to remain relevant.
00:12:06.400
What interpreter do you use for Ruby? Matt's Ruby interpreter is the dominant choice.
00:12:13.020
JRuby has maintained a steady presence over the years.
00:12:19.580
Rubinius started strong but hasn't managed to gain traction as a serious project.
00:12:28.360
IronRuby seems to have faded from relevance after its initial excitement.
00:12:35.120
If there are any significant projects I missed, I apologize; there's just so much going on.
00:12:41.219
Test frameworks are a topic of interest; Test Unit was once the default standard.
00:12:48.520
Now it appears that MiniTest is what most people are utilizing.
00:12:56.780
RSpec has gained immense popularity, and I suspect it's been the primary choice.
00:13:03.300
Cucumber seems to have diminished significantly, which surprised me given its past prominence.
00:13:10.760
What web server do you recommend? Mongrel has lost a substantial amount of ground.
00:13:18.220
Passenger, too, isn't in a good place, which is curious since I've been switching to it.
00:13:25.700
It’s essential to see those declines over time within the community.
00:13:31.540
Axel has remained stable, while Unicorn jumped into view.
00:13:34.000
Another surprise, Puma has also quickly captured attention.
00:13:41.080
Regarding Nosql databases, it's interesting to see the statistics.
00:13:46.719
There are questions regarding the popularity of different databases.
00:13:51.940
Voldemort showed a decent uptake while still remaining niche.
00:13:58.220
MongoDB was pretty significant in its use case.
00:14:03.820
Elasticsearch was a new entry this year, and it knocked out many competitors.
00:14:10.339
This change is likely due to its dual applicability as both a search tool and primary data store.
00:14:16.740
Every year, I also ask about JavaScript frameworks and their evolution.
00:14:24.000
It’s essential to discuss JavaScript in terms of its historical context and the choices available.
00:14:30.440
The early days were riddled with copy-paste code that was very inconsistent.
00:14:37.640
I recall a time when JavaScript was primarily about complicated hacks just to work across browsers.
00:14:44.520
Then came the game-changers like Sam Stevenson, who helped shape modern standards.
00:14:51.000
The rise of frameworks like Prototype and jQuery has transformed how we handle JavaScript.
00:14:57.380
In 2008, I started asking which framework people were using, and it was illuminating.
00:15:03.660
Prototype was prominent when I first queried it, while jQuery was also emerging.
00:15:10.000
Shifting my focus back to MVC frameworks: the survey has asked who uses what.
00:15:15.420
XJS is a newer player to the game, while Knockout.js and Backbone have shown drastic declines.
00:15:24.540
React, however, has made a substantial entrance into the arena.
00:15:29.540
A significant change in JavaScript usage patterns reflects how the landscape has evolved.
00:15:35.520
Now back to Ruby, I want to focus on the usage trends seen over the years.
00:15:42.280
The community's optimism seems to be reflected in survey responses.
00:15:48.020
This year, 86% of respondents believe that the Ruby community is on the right track.
00:15:54.900
Overall sentiment from Rubyists remains positive.
00:16:02.020
Finally, the consensus indicates a strong affinity towards Sass.
00:16:08.920
I will ensure to provide clarity on data trends at a later point.
00:16:12.780
Thank you all for your engagement in this exploration of Ruby.
