Introduction

For those who follow my channel (idk how you would follow my channel and not be reading this), you would know that I have been going through TheOdinProject’s JavaScript path in hopes of becoming either a freelancer or a web developer. I am taking a break from Linguistics for the time being and I think the way TOP structures itself is really useful. I’d argue it’s the best learning resource for getting into web development. But I had an issue, and that issue was JavaScript. I think JavaScript is a great language, but it isn’t opinionated enough. Maybe JavaScript wasn’t sticking in my head as much as I’d have liked it to, but there was always something off putting. Honestly I’d still boil it down to a skill issue since I am new, but I digress. This blog post is about why I am switching from the JavaScript path over to the Ruby one >:)

Inspiration

Because of university, I haven’t had as much time to program as I’d like. I am still a full time student for one more term, so I have to give it my best shot one more time before I graduate.

I was recently really sick with strep throat so I admittedly fell behind a bit, but my brain still wanted to be stimulated. I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to audiobooks, but I had the itch to listen to programming talks. I follow ThePrimeagen and listen to whatever highlights he has that appeal to me, and one recently titled “DHH is right about everything” caught my eye. I tapped on the video, closed my eyes, and listened half way through before passing out. I was sick, exhausted, and sweating buckets, and it didn’t even feel like much time had passed. I was so engaged in what DHH was saying and I absolutely love how opinionated he is. He briefly went over his timeline of how he learned to program and I resonated a lot with it. I have failed learning to program many times in the past, and I am back at it once again with a more mature head and a strong passion to learn. I now have a level of confidence and grit that I didn’t have before, and it’s made me a better learner.

Without getting too sidetracked, I will say that after listening, I was hooked. I wanted to learn more about Ruby, I wanted to learn Ruby, I wanted to hear people talk about Ruby, so on and so fourth. I do have an addictive personality and I always do deep dives into things that catch my interest, but this is something different. This is a life skill that I want to take forward with me for the rest of my life.

Philosophy of Ruby and Rails

The philosophy of Ruby is simple: to make the programmer happy. Yukihiro Matsumoto, the creator of Ruby, has famously said “I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy,” and that’s just really cool to hear. Ruby has a syntax that makes you feel like you’re almost writing in pseudo-code. It’s very easy to understand from a first glance, and combined with Rails the possibilities are endless. Rails was created with productivity in mind, and it’s very opinionated on what that means. This has made Ruby on Rails a popular choice even in today’s age for spinning up working prototypes of applications and whatnot. I love that. I want to have that kind of creative freedom when writing code.

Interactions with Ruby developers

Community matters a lot to me, and Ruby developers are just so fucking nice. I don’t understand. I think it’s due to Ruby on Rails being a more mature piece of software at this point, so you don’t have people trying to reinvent a productive workflow and push it onto people every 6 months. It’s calmed down a lot. The Ruby developers that I’ve spoken to kind of reflect that. They’re still using Ruby, and they’re still using Rails, or they’re even learning like I am. Interacting with Ruby developers really made me understand one thing: it doesn’t matter what’s new when all the old code bases still need maintenance.

My gamble

I am going to take a gamble when I say this. I am basing this only off of my own intuition and experiences. I have a belief that developers are going to reach a point where they’re going to be done hopping and swapping and shifting around with JavaScript and Ruby is going to be a resurgence. There will be Ruby content creators, there will be more Ruby job opportunities at all levels, and it’ll be the second coming of Ruby. This will happen after some sort of new major release.

Conclusion

I have spent so much time trying to convince myself that if I was programming, I had to make it harder for myself. Then I would language hop and fall into tutorial hell. TheOdinProject helped me out of that, and introduced me to the world of Ruby. Ruby’s cool. Idk what else to say. That’s all :p