Sass
Ruby Survey: 6 Years of Data Revealed
Summarized using AI
Ruby Survey: 6 Years of Data Revealed
by Hampton CatlinThe video titled 'Ruby Survey: 6 Years of Data Revealed' presented by Hampton Catlin at the Ancient City Ruby 2015 conference delves into the results of a survey conducted over six years to track the evolution of the Ruby community and technology. The primary focus is on trends within the community, technology usage, and demographic shifts. Catlin provides a detailed analysis of the survey results covering various topics, including:
- Survey Evolution: Catlin reflects on his initial survey conducted in 2008, which aimed to gauge community trends and technology usage. After initial challenges in data correlation, the survey evolved into a more structured effort, gathering data from over 1,200 participants in its early years.
- Demographics: The survey indicates a consistent low percentage of women (4-5%) in the Ruby community and a rising number of individuals identifying as non-binary. Notably, almost 50% of respondents now identify as team leaders or managers rather than as Rubyists.
- Community Engagement: Approximately 44.6% of respondents reported attending a conference, indicating strong community involvement. Insights into language skills show linguistic diversity, with 74% using English at work and 47% being multilingual.
- Technology and Frameworks: The discussion includes popular frameworks and tools among Ruby developers. Rails continues to be the dominant framework, with over 75% usage. The rise of alternatives like Sinatra and the changes in text editor preferences (notably the growth of Vim) are highlighted.
- Open Source Contributions: Catlin notes that while 83% have contributed to open-source projects, engagement has waned over the past year. He reflects on employment patterns, indicating a shift towards traditional jobs rather than the entrepreneurial spirit expected in early Ruby days.
- Philosophical Trends: An examination of beliefs within the community reveals significant non-religious identification (66% non-believers), reflecting broader societal changes.
- JavaScript Landscape: The evolution of JavaScript frameworks is touched upon, noting the rise of React and the historical context of its growth compared to earlier frameworks like Prototype and jQuery.
In conclusion, Catlin emphasizes a positive sentiment towards the Ruby community, with 86% of respondents believing it is on the right path, alongside a strong inclination towards Sass as a preferred tool. This survey serves as a snapshot of the Ruby community's trends over a significant period, revealing insights into its past, present, and future.
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.
Explore all talks recorded at Ancient City Ruby 2015
+1