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Comment by nixpulvis | Hacker News Reader

Should have released tomorrow to be 21 and 1 day old. Looking forward to many more years with Ruby as my primary language.

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> Looking forward to many more years with Ruby as my primary language.

Beware of complacency or you will find yourself unemployable when Ruby will be old news.

I didn't learn any new language since I started C# 4 years ago and I mightily regret it.

When was the last time a popular non-"platform" language became "old news"?

Do you really think a majority of the web will be powered by Ruby in 20 years from now ?

The majority of the web isn't powered by Ruby now. We have a hodgepodge of PHP, C#, Java, Perl, static, Node, Rails and other Ruby frameworks, Python, any I missed?

People have been proclaiming the death of Java for how long now? And it's still going strong. I'd argue that Ruby will last even longer than Java because it's a nicer language and has more room to grow. Ruby you can port to other runtimes, Java, why bother? It won't outlive the JVM.

The only thing I think that could replace Ruby is Lisp. Maybe in 10 more years Racket will where Ruby is today. I doubt it. By that time, Ruby will be where Java is.

> It won't outlive the JVM.

Well, the JVM will probably outlive the human race, so that's actually a comforting thought for Java developers :)

That sounds so ominous! What are you predicting the JVM will do to the human race??

And why will it comfort Java-ites?

I'm picturing something involving lairs carved out of dormant volcanoes and pools with sharks (possibly with lasers).

Does it need to be a "majority"? There are applications being written now, in Ruby, that are intended to still be maintained 20 years from now. Will the "new hot language" be something other than Ruby in 20 years? Well, yeah, by definition.

No. It isn't now, it hasn't ever been, and I would be surprised if anyone expected it to be so.

The more important question is: will it still be possible to earn a respectable crust doing web development in Ruby in twenty years time? Any person who claims to know the answer to that one is a liar.

Is it really that hard to switch platforms/languages? Learning a new language should not be so difficult, particularly once you've become familiar with a few.

There are so many factors influencing language and API popularity that it's silly to try to bet it all on one language/platform or vendor at any time in your life. Why not just enjoy the ones you use, and when they are no longer of use (for whatever political, technical or personal reasons), switch to something else?

In all fairness, if you don't anticipate a switch many years before you have to make it, you could get caught flat-footed. I personally have taken jobs where I didn't have any primary experience in the platform, but it was for, essentially, pocket change. I would hate to get dependent on a six-figure income predicated on knowing, say, enterprise Java, then suddenly find that nobody's hiring enterprise Java guys anymore and having to take a huge pay cut. Sure I could find a job. That doesn't mean it won't suck.

By then we'll probably have decided it's a good idea to develop a JSON serialisation for HTML, and we'll all be writing client side web code 3 layers of code generators eventually targetting JavaScript, backed by a .js library that implements an Android VM

IMO Perl was as popular 6-7 years ago as Ruby is now. Today... it's not dead, but I wouldn't want to be a monoglot Perl developer looking for work.

Is there a such thing as a monoglot Perl dev? I've never heard of it.

Maybe 12-14 years ago? Perl's heyday was the turn of the century, I think.

Well what's stopping you? Stop regretting and pick up a book!

I don't have much love for C# but if your fundamentals are sound you won't have too much difficulty picking up a new language. 6 months ago I wouldn't have known an NSMutableArray from a bar of soap, a couple of books and some elbow grease later and I'm beta testing my first iOS app for the app store (with a ruby backend : D). And I am far from one of those "polyglot" hyper programming geniuses.

Stop regretting, start working, and keep going. This time next year you'll have another arrow for your bow. It's not rocket science, believe me.

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