What do you love about programming in Ruby?

Community
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I’m interested in learning your thoughts and feelings, and how they differ from those in other languages.

For me, it’s the “human” side of it, by being very expressive, allows me to communicate my ideas better. I was also drawn to it because the community is authentic, thoughtful, and welcoming.

Please share your perspective. I’m looking forward to learning more about your experience.

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Where to find your dream Ruby job
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When I first got into programming in 2020, I first focused on JS but then I was drawn to Ruby because it was a lot less confusing for a self-learner, due to how the language design is consistent and the ecosystem has a strong focus on conventions.

Since then, I’ve grown to appreciate Ruby’s “weirdness” more, or whenever it’s used for “just for fun” projects. Someone once said that Ruby is the perfect language for the solo hobbyist programmer, and I think that’s often true.

At the same time, the experience of working on large Ruby code bases has made me curious what it would look like for a language to have robust static typing and still be concise / pleasant to write like Ruby. I’m not sure any languages like that exist yet, but maybe soon.

Here’s a fun site related to this thread: 365 reasons to love Ruby

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the first time i used ruby on rails was like a magic with the generators, then i love the idea about the convention over configuration because i came from java, but with ruby i feel like you were writing as a poem. then i started learn ruby the hard way and ruby has many shortcuts for methods.
is so easy to understand.

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I’m not particularly brigth and “to get the idea” of some abstrations can take me a while. Complete lack of patience with I may consider nonsense.
Ex:
Java or C# Object instantiation:
User user = new User(“Alice”);

Why do I have to use the word User 2 times? The guys who design this are far smarter than me. Coundn’t they come up with something better like:
user = User.new(‘Alice’)

So, when I saw ruby, programming finaly made sense.

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Comparing to some popular languages that I know:

  • JS - null + undefined already makes things way too stupid, but ok at least there is TS and syntax sugar to make it less suffering but still… I only use it coz necessary
  • Python - At first glance it’s not too bad (and I don’t use it much). I understand in some areas it has way more libraries so it’s quite natural to go that side sometimes. But the syntax, having to use uv + virtualenv etc. really shows that it’s not that good on developer happiness side to say the least.
  • Static typed languages (Java, C#, dunno what else I used before): It’s “safe” but also quite easy to start getting strange boilerplates to make things work due to static typing… and I have no interest in using them when possible
  • COBOL: Ok that’s not even popular I used it during university internship in a bank and I quit several weeks later. Hand that to “AI” I would say…
  • Rust: I can understand it, did a project for the sake of learning but really similar or even worse than Java (it’s a lower level language I understand).
  • Go: Weird. I think it’s great for single binary projects like caddy and other stuff and also async/concurrency side. But things like having to catch returned error from every call looks weird or even awful to me.

Ruby got some issues in performance (well on the extreme side), lack of libraries (like comparing to Python), sometimes got drama (but most of the time it’s just fine). But I can only think of it as my go-to programming language. I guess this is my bias and my love. And I wish ruby would be used in more areas (desktop apps, ML(AI?), or even just web frontend)

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I’m not going to be original at all… language expressiveness, and the (m|tr)agic DSLs you can bring to life.

The thought-to-code process really flows, and it’s a pleasure. (“Fun fact”: I played a bit with something called Pharo a really long time ago, even before stumbling upon Ruby, and that helped all that “sender”, “receiver”, “message”, “self”, etc. stuff to click immediately when starting with Ruby.)

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I love how easy Ruby is to use. When I write code, I don’t need to think about what’s happening behind the scenes. It feels like I’m writing in a language I already know.

Ruby’s community is also great. People are kind and helpful. This helps me learn and grow.

I first used Rails in 2010 for my university project. My friend and I finished it and got an A. After that, I kept going.

I started working professionally in 2011. The main reason I continued was the helpful people in online forums. They made learning much easier.

Also, when I go to events in other countries, I meet people I know from before. We talk like old friends, even if we only met once or twice. This is amazing.

In short, the friendly community is what matters most to me.

PS: I believe this forum is Ruby friendly as well. Because many Ruby lovers are here :heart:

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