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So today we're going to talk about saving Ruby from the apocalypse. This is the second part of the future of Ruby, the present.
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If you were just in the last talk, you heard Justin and Josh take us through the history of the language. This talk will continue that story.
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Hello, my name is Jason. You can find me on Twitter, where I sometimes ramble about useless things on my blog. And because I live the dad life now, here’s an obligatory family photo.
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I also want to give a shout-out to my family for being super supportive and letting me do things like this. By day, I'm a senior engineer at a company called Linds Reynolds.
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I'm just curious who in here has heard of Linds Reynolds? Awesome! For the rest of you, I have a question.
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You picked up that I probably work for a rental company, but you're probably confused about what we do, as that's always the question I get.
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So, I’m going to poll you: who thinks we might be in eyeglasses? Anyone think we’re a camera rental company?
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If you ever hear me say Linds Reynolds, that's what I'm referring to.
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Okay, so I just told you we're going to be looking at Ruby in the present, but today I need your help. Because to safely look at the present, we’ve got to go to the future. I've been to the future; I just returned from the year 2020, and things are rough.
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Specifically, I checked on how you were doing, and honestly, I think it's just better if I tell you your story. So, you've just woken up. You're not sure where you are; you think you're in a hospital room. You’ve got an IV attached to you, your throat's all dry, so you try and call out for a nurse.
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No one makes a sound. You scream, "Nurse!" but to no avail; no one comes into the room. You pull out the remote and hit that call button. You keep hitting it, but nobody ever comes. In fact, nothing happens.
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You slowly wipe your eyes and, as your sight comes back, you see across the room a couch and on that couch is your backpack. Right now it feels like a mile away. Your body’s weak, but you're excited because, well, that’s your backpack. The only problem is that now you've got to get out of bed and get to the couch.
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You decide, "Okay, I'm going to do this: one, two, three!" and you fall back onto the bed, discouraged. You say, "Okay, I'm going to do this one more time: one, two, three!" and you're up.
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You start the slow walk from the bed to the couch. Every step is a little stronger than the last, and you finally make it over there.
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You grab a seat on the couch and start going through your bag. You see all the clothes you're wearing, last you see your shirt, your pants, then you find your cell phone.
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Yes, your cell phone! This will have all the answers. You go to turn it on, and it's dead. Naturally frustrated, you throw it back in the bag and get dressed.
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You walk out into the hall; you look to the left, you look to the right, and you're in a ghost town. As you start to make your way down the hall, you hear boom, boom, and the noises get louder.
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As you reach the end of the hall, you see an elevator with the doors open, and the booms keep getting louder; the noise is coming from inside the elevator. You take a peek down into the elevator shaft, scared, but you do it anyway.
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You’re greeted by zombies—a container of dead-looking creatures slapping their lifeless bodies against the metal walls of this elevator. That's okay until one tries to reach for you; it scares you, and you fall over.
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You pull yourself off the ground and take off running to the exit sign. At this point, you don’t know where you are, but it's not where you remember being.
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So, you make your way outside, and in fact, it's just a normal sunny day—except everything's different. The world seems empty now.
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About a quarter mile away, you see a road, and you think, "Okay, I'm going to make my way to that road." As you get closer, you start to hear a car coming; it's loud, so you walk out into the street.
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A car suddenly slams on its brakes, and smoke clears. It’s DHH, and he tells you to hop in. You say okay, you get in the car, and you both take off.
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Now you're in a car with DHH, and naturally you're filled with questions, like what are your thoughts on single-page applications? Why should I still use Rails? Do you still think TDD is dead? But instead, you decide to ask the most burning question: what's going on here? Where am I?
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He explains that for the most part, the rest of the world hasn't changed at all, but an epidemic of software developers has broken out. There were too many languages, too many tools, and too many libraries.
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Decision fatigue became so overwhelming that developers were unable to cope with selecting the right tool for the job. They began to slowly lose their minds and turned into zombies. Once this happened, there was no choice but to isolate all developers to protect society.
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Rightfully confused, you're taken by DHH to the only thing you have left. As you get closer to your destination, he explains that developers decided to form camps. But all the camps ended up as silos: PHP camp, Java camp, and obviously, there's a Ruby camp, and that's where DHH is taking you.
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He explains that actually very few Ruby developers turned into zombies during the outbreak. In the distance, you see a shiny diamond-shaped object that begins to beautifully reflect the sun.
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As you get closer, you realize it’s the Ruby camp, or a base camp if you will. You see some smiling faces writing code, embracing the expressive, beautiful language that you know and love. Hooray!
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As you exit the car, DHH wishes you farewell. You close the door, stand up, take a good stretch, turn around, and you're greeted by another familiar face—it's Matt!
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He shows you around, and you get to connect with old friends, meet new ones, and learn to embrace this post-apocalyptic world that you're now part of.
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Everyone is so friendly, and it turns out that Matt's motto, "be nice," applies in the post-apocalyptic world too. You think at this point, well, Hacker News finally got it right. Ruby's dead.
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But just like every time in the past you've heard this statement, you're confused. You look around and see tons of people using Ruby. Either way, you're confused but happy to be safe.
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You grab a bunk and get a good night's sleep. The next morning, over breakfast, you start hearing frightening stories about how we've made software so complex and isolated.
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There’s just no hope anymore. Every time we think we’ve solved a problem, a new language comes out that’s shinier and promises something better.
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So, that leaves you with one burning question: who’s going to fix this? Weeks start to go by, and you start to become despondent, maybe a little sad. You miss life as it was before. You ask yourself, how can life return to normal?
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You put on your thinking face: what can Ruby do to prevent more developers from turning into zombies? Ruby itself is already a pretty powerful language. What seems to be the problem? You're not really sure, but maybe it's time to talk to others in the group.
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So, over dinner that night, you start sketching your plan with a few of your close friends. You ask, can we reverse this? They say: well, we’ve tried, but no one can hear or see us through all the noise that all the other programming languages are making. Everyone is promising the best, and we just can't do it.
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Disappointed, you let the conversation turn to something else, eventually calling it a night and deciding you'll try again tomorrow.
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The next morning, you ask Matt to go on a walk, and he agrees. As you stroll around the camp, he explains that ever since the outbreak, he has been trying to keep Ruby alive.
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He emphasizes that while he doesn't believe Ruby's dead, he tells you that he can't keep it alive alone—neither he nor the core team. It requires more than that!
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You ask, how can I help? But before you can finish your question, he's called away. How frustrating! You love Ruby and all you want to do is fight for its survival.
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Others have tried, and while some are still trying, it just feels like a wasted effort. You try to go to sleep that night, tossing and turning.
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Finally, you say to hell with it. You get up, head to the campfire, and dream of a simpler, happier time in Ruby—a time much like the one you saw in the previous song.
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It hits you: you’ve got to step up! You've got to be the one to save Ruby! Excited to save Ruby, you decide to take some time to problem-solve.
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I mean, after all, you're a software developer. You start thinking about the problems at hand. Well, Ruby isn't necessarily the shiniest language anymore, other programming languages are coming out, and they’re so popular!
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People are being jerks about Ruby on the internet now, and developers are moving on, just abandoning the libraries we rely on.
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You think, okay, before I try to figure out more problems or dig into solutions, I want to reach out to other people. I want to go to these other camps and learn what other programming languages have done, as they've all been in this situation.
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So, without changing Ruby the language, are there any ideas I can bring back? Anything that could be introduced? Anything I can learn from other languages?
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You spend weeks traveling around to find these developers—anyone who will talk to you. You visit the Python camp, PHP developers, Java developers, even .NET developers, Elixir developers, and JavaScript developers.
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You take some time at each camp to understand the problems they’re trying to solve and the different approaches they take.
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The thing that you learn is that they're actually all trying to do good, however skewed some of the approaches may be to you. They’re taking what they think is the best approach. After your time at camp, you try to make your way back home, feeling good from the amazing conversations.
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But on your way back, you hit a JavaScript zombie who’s trying to turn you with all his frameworks and tools. You get past him safely, but then you're met by the PHP zombie of the past: "MySQL connects, it’s so easy to deploy, we don’t even have object-oriented!" This is our early 2000s PHP zombie.
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Finally, you let out a sigh of relief as you safely return to camp. You’re re-energized by everything you’ve learned.
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You sit down, focusing intently on the problems at hand—keeping Ruby alive. You think deeper and realize that Ruby isn't dead, but rather we need to keep Ruby relevant.
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That seems more accurate. So you identify five specific problems.
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First, people are talking about Ruby rather than celebrating its pros. People are shouting its cons instead of taking action or being the change they want to see. They’re just ranting online and bailing.
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You see that familiarity breeds contempt; several people using Ruby before the apocalypse are starting to find it boring and are no longer excited to use it. They've just given up.
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You also observe that libraries are going unmaintained. A scroll through GitHub reveals that many once-thriving libraries are now abandoned, racking up GitHub issues and making all of our applications forced to become legacy.
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There are no new ideas coming in; people decide it’s just best to chase these new languages. This leads to fewer products being built with Ruby, and unless people are building products with Ruby, less relevant Ruby becomes.
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So now that you've identified the problems, it's time to talk to the camp. You say, okay, let’s look at some ideas on how we can keep Ruby relevant. You suggest that we talk about Ruby more.
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Years ago, the internet was filled with articles discussing the problems people solved with Ruby. Now, many of those articles collect dust while people talk about leaving Ruby for X. Those discussions, whether fair or not, don’t help. That’s how we ended up in this mess.
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You challenge everyone to share and learn any new tricks they come across, even if they think the ideas are silly. Just because you're excited about them doesn’t mean they won't help.
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You challenge people to learn new ideas and explore other programming languages. Learn them, understand what they’re useful for, and see if there are concepts you can bring back to your own code.
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You’re sure there’s a lot we can learn from each other, even outside our own community. Continuing through your solutions, you bring up once-popular libraries that are now abandoned.
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You encourage people to start digging into them and building new libraries. Things change, we have new ideas, new ways to do things.
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You encourage everyone to do this: if you don’t like the way something is done, write it the way you think it should be done.
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Encourage some of the teams to start building new applications with Ruby—even if they don’t succeed, some will. The successful ones create jobs for Ruby.
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Armed and ready for battle, your team gets to work writing blog posts about everything they’ve learned.
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People are blogging about the problems they're solving with Ruby, sharing new tricks they’ve learned. Teams are forming, going out to other camps and learning how they can solve problems, eager to learn from others.
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They’ve made their way out to unfamiliar terrain in search of growth and new ideas.
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Libraries once abandoned are finding new life from everyday developers like you. Issues are being closed, pull requests are being merged, and people are upgrading their applications.
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Instead of painful tears, there are tears of joy. Tired of complaining, people started to build new libraries with Ruby, solving problems with code and improving the ecosystem as a whole.
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The more entrepreneurial types are building products and systems to solve problems.
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Others who have preached Ruby’s demise are now witnessing a renaissance of a language that, while never dead, had seemed stale. Other communities have taken notice, now recognizing Ruby as a relevant language.
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The world begins to find balance; developers stop turning into zombies and instead become normal people solving problems with the language they love.
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Our silos and camps begin to disperse, making it safe for Ruby developers to enter the world again. Pieces are banded together, and software, though as usual, won't be the same.
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So, with that absurdly ridiculous story in place, I want to talk about the present state of Ruby and pose this question: Is Ruby dead?
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I am always the first to admit that when I see articles like this, I start to believe them because I think, "Oh, they’re right. I need to abandon ship. I start looking for a new job and thinking it’s time to learn Elixir. It’s over."
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But I started reading those articles years ago and I still have a Ruby job. I still attend conferences with many other Ruby developers.
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So, I don't think Ruby's dead, but I do want to examine something I’m not ashamed to admit I may not know as much about as I should.
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Is there anybody familiar with the hype cycle? If you're not familiar, I’ll give you a very non-official JSON definition of it.
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According to this model, successful technologies go through these five phases. The first is a technology trigger; this is when a technological idea, maybe a proof of concept, enters the world.
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The second is the peak of inflated expectations. That’s the point where people start to believe, whether they're right or wrong, that this new technology will solve all their problems.
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The third phase is called the trough of disillusionment. This happens when the expectations aren't met, and people realize, "Oh, this technology did not solve my problem."
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Fourth is the slope of enlightenment; this is the moment when people start to actually weigh the pros and cons and make a more justified decision on using a technology.
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And finally, there’s the plateau of productivity. This is when things start to balance out, and people that know they need to use this technology are effectively using it.
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So now that we have that wild definition, let's look at that in terms of Ruby. The technology trigger? I like to think it falls somewhere between when Matt released Ruby in '93 and the mid-2000s when Rails came out.
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I consider this the technology trigger for Ruby. The peak of inflated expectations? Ruby was the object-oriented language that would rule above all. It was shiny—it made developers happy! Everyone was talking about it.
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Next, disillusionment. "Oh, Ruby's too slow; it's just a toy language!" The language didn’t claim to solve those problems, but people expected it to.
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The slope of enlightenment—what do we know we can get from Ruby? We know its weaknesses and businesses are building all kinds of apps with it.
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It has been adopted. Finally, Ruby is mature. And that’s where I think we are today: on this plateau.
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Many of us—well, probably all of us—use Ruby every day. It's one of my main tools. There’s not much to talk about Ruby per se anymore, but I still love to share about it.
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So with that said, is Ruby dead? No! I feel so strongly about this that I even made a website for it: IsRubyDead.com. Next time you're unsure, check it out!
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Just because Ruby isn't dead doesn't mean we don’t have to fight for relevancy. So what are some ways we can keep Ruby relevant?
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Well, you already know how to do that because you saved the world earlier! Talk about Ruby more. Learn some new ideas.
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Help maintain abandoned libraries! I have two specific examples I can share with you right now. The first one is a talk online by Richard Schneeman at RailsConf 2016, talking about how he became the maintainer of Sprockets.
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It was a wild first three minutes, and you did not know what was going on, but it’s very good!
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The next is an article that was just published in Wired Magazine about Justin Searls, who was just up here talking about how he took responsibility for RSpec after the passing of Jim Wyrick.
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We know where these libraries are; we can see when they start to feel stale or haven’t been updated in a while.
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Anytime we introduce one at work, I always check when was the last commit? Build new libraries when you learn new ideas.
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If you think you have a better way to solve a problem, just make it a gem! Even if it doesn't become the next big thing, it might help someone else, and that helps keep Ruby relevant.
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Also, build the next Rails if you feel like it! You might be thinking you're not the type to build a product and sell it, but if you do build a successful product, this is hard to do.
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If you build a successful product, you create more jobs with Ruby. More Ruby jobs mean that this influx of junior developers can start getting jobs.
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Ruby can stay relevant and continue to grow. And I’d like to add one more thing: teach people Ruby!
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There are a lot of times I have friends who ask me how I got into programming, and I tell them my story: I stumbled upon it. I’m a college dropout because I’m really bad at math. Ruby means a lot to me; it helped me develop my skills.
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So, I want to share Ruby with my friends who want to learn it. You might ask, Jason, why do you care so much?
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Well, share some time with me, and you'll learn that I really love this language. There are many reasons, but mostly it's because it literally changed my life.
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Like I said, I was a college dropout, but it wasn't until I was studying computer science that I knew I wanted to be a programmer.
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Ruby helped me bridge that gap from being a college dropout to a full-time employed senior software developer. It made complex things more approachable for me.
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And the thing is, I know I'm not alone. I've talked to many people in this community, and they have similar experiences to mine.
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It's not perfect, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t bring me joy to use every day. It turns complex problems into fun challenges.
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It’s at a point now where it’s mature, battle-tested, stable. It may not be the shiny, hip tool, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant.
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At the end of the day, a programming language is more than just the language itself; it’s the entire ecosystem around it.
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So when I say ecosystem, I mean it includes the community, the tools we build, and the libraries—the types of problems we’re trying to solve.
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Even if we don’t have commit access to Ruby, or at least I don't, it doesn't mean we can't make a difference.
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So next time you think Ruby is dying, see if there's a way you can do your part. Find me on the internet; I have stickers for GoRails that my buddy Chris Oliver sent me with, and stickers for Prompt.
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If you don't know what either of those two things are, come see me. I'm super shy; if you talk to me, I'll not stop talking to you, and thank you.
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And also, thank you for clapping so I didn't have to use this slide.
