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Comment by codegladiator | Hacker News Reader

I am all for your love of Rails, but tools should not be picked based on how much you love them. Choose the correct tool for the job, if it is rails, good for you.

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For me its Rails, also because I love it. None of us is 100% objective or rational about this. I'm very much aware most companies can be built with any of the common stacks, the tech barely matters for 90% of these companies. Why does it mater if advertisement algo company X or insurance tech company Y choose java/.net/ruby/php ? All these stacks are good enough and have been used countless times in varying scales.

For example if you are building something around nlp, probably pick python.

Also, since you are all into ruby, maybe take a look around as to why other languages exist.

That's quite a specific use case and as a mainly backend web developer I don't hit many nlp problems. That's usually a whole specialisation of it's own.

> maybe take a look around as to why other languages exist.

I've been around. Still like Rails, works well for me. Thanks for the advice :)

There's a solid question as to why the tool you'd pick for CRUD databasey stuff should be coupled to what you'd pick for NLP heavy lifting by the interpreter. Different jobs, different tools.

Depends why you love Ruby. If you love it because you adore programming languages with red logos then yes, bad choice. But if you love it because it lets you work quickly and performs well then that is a reason to pick it.

Not to mention, if you’re a solo developer or a small team, picking a language everyone knows and likes absolutely is a good reason. It’ll save you a lot of time.

I can list some good qualities I love about Ruby, but I don't know if that's gonna be a great answer. It just clicked with me and analysing it too much is futile. Kinda like analysing why you love your friends is futile: sure, you can list some good qualities. But you could also list good qualities of people who aren't your best friends. It just so happens sometimes a person or a tool clicks with you, it's being in the right place at the right time with this tool. I can see why C# or Python make sense for people. But they haven't clicked with me so they're not my friends. We have no history together.

Now I'm not saying you can't ever grow out of your friends (or languages), I just haven't outgrew Ruby.

I'm sure if joel loves rails, it must be working for him.

If it didn't, surely he'd hate it, no?

No. You can continue to build everything with the language you love. But there are cases where a certain thing is just easier to get done in a particular language. And there is nothing about hating any language.

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