Is this a meme language? Why learn this language over say, C++?

or Perl?

>>59042554
if you had to ask, it probably is.

Depends on what you want to do anon...like every fucking language. Is Ruby a good replacement for perl? Yes, and so is Python.

What is it used for predominantly?

>>59042749
Ruby on Rails is a long time popular web framework. Modem RoR is fantastic.

It's very popular for creating simple programming languages called a DSL, google it. This is why it's used for Chef and Puppet (server configuration management).

It's also good for scripting.

I use it for all three of these at work.

>>59042749
Aside from the du jur use-case of Rails Web and Scripting proper it's also fairly popular with small dev shops to produce not-to-scale proof of concept projects due to it being easy to work with and fairly robust albeit not efficient enough for literally doing it all in practice.

When I worked for startups we'd often spend six weeks throwing together a project in Ruby for a pitch to some VC investor(s) and if we got a green light would then proceed to dissect the work and figure out what we'd need to translate it into for scale use.

The downside is that a lot of startups got drunk on the kool-aid and stuck with Ruby well beyond what is good to spec.

>>59042554
Because ruby is better for web apps than c++.

I would prefer C#.net compared to ruby though.

>>59042562
>>59042554
>Perl and Ruby vs C++
You've got different languages for different cases.

>>59042554
It's "good enough."

If you want to do dev ops then it's the way to go (go look at things like Chef and Ansible).

If you want to do scripting, it's the way to go (Python is just not as expressive as Ruby imo).

If you want to do web dev it's the way to go. Especially for startups. All of these faggots saying "it won't scale" have no idea what the fuck they're even talking about. Considering that the framework is rarely the bottleneck for a very long time (unless you are the 1% of the 1% of the 1% who hit the jackpot and go BIGLY viral). Take a look at large companies who still use Rails as the back end (shopify, basecamp, etc).

>>59042749
Homebrew is written in Ruby. I don't know of anything else. But I've heard the Japanese like it.

>>59042554

>Is this a meme language?

I wouldn't say so.

Ruby influenced a lot of langauges in the aftermat: PHP (i.e. the sapceship-operator "<=>"), Scala, Rust, Swift..
Even Python3 has introduced some elements that look suspiciously like Ruby.

Ruby is just a great combination of Smalltalk, Perl, Python, LISP and JS. And IMHO it's the best scripting language out there, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder..

Also Ruby on Rails was the Gold standard for web frameworks when it occured. There's a lot of frameworks that were "inspired" by Rails, i.e. Java Spring, or PHP Code Igniter. But you can see a lot of traces in other big frameworks.


>Why learn this language over say, C++?

You compare languages for different purposes.

Basically you want to learn:
-one low level language like C, C++ or Rust for "muh performance"
-one scripting langauge for rapid prototyping, duct taping things together, everyday scripting (copy file 100 times) and so on
-JavaScript + HTML + CSS if you are interested how the web works
-Haskell, LISP or Scheme so people will assume you are smart and a good programmer

>>59044679

>I would prefer C#.net compared to ruby though.

C# is not bad, but .NET ..?
Even Java has better web frameworks than that.