Ruby Survey Results from January 2017

Thinking About a Ruby Survey

I think a lot about Ruby; it’s community, and how people are using it. It changed my life. I decided that I would run a Ruby Survey to see if I could get some real data to accompany my thoughts.

This Ruby Survey was my first, and I’ve learned some better questions to ask in the future. I’ll likely be running a similar Ruby Survey again later this year. I might even run the Ruby Survey possibly on a routine schedule.

A special thank you to all 227 participants who took the time to complete the survey.

Ruby Survey

1. How did you get started with Ruby? (Multiple)

   • Early Adopter (22)
   • Ruby on Rails (174)
   • Another Ruby Web Framework (15)
   • Scripting (53)
   • Other (9)
   • Chef, RPG Maker, Online Course, Puppet
2. What attracted you to Ruby?
   • Syntax, Ease of Use, Readability
   • Ruby on Rails
   • Object Oriented Programming
   • The Standard Library
   • Gems
   • Consistency
   • Hype
   • The Pickaxe Book
   • Community
   • Quick Feedback
   • Work
   • Metaprogramming
   • Chef
   • Time to Production
   • Similarities to C
   • Daugther’s Name (Touche!)
   • Friends
   • tenderlove
   • Duck Typing
   • Sinatra Framework
3. How did you learn Ruby?
   • Programming Bootcamp
   • Well Grounded Rubyist
   • Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
   • The Pickaxe Book
   • The Standard Library
   • Agile Web Development with Rails
   • Writing Code
   • RailsCasts
   • Michael Hartl’s Ruby on Rails Tutorial
   • Big Nerd Ranch
   • Code School
   • Code Academy
   • Blog Posts
   • Practical Object-Oriented Design with Ruby
   • Ruby Tapas
   • Eloquent Ruby
   • Metaprogramming Ruby
   • The RSpec Book
   • Team Treehouse
   • Udemy
   • Learn to Program
   • Documentation
   • Ruby Koans
4. Where do you use Ruby? (Multiple)
   • Day Job (189)
   • Freelance Projects (77)
   • Side Projects (179)
   • Experimenting (121)
   • No Longer Use Ruby (3)
     • “Mutable state”
     • “No concurrency”
     • “Not functional enough”
     • “Paid job moved to Javascript”
     • “Side projects moved to Elixir”
   • Other (2)
5. Do you consider yourself active in the Ruby community? (Still using Ruby)
   • Yes (120)
   • No (101)
6. Where do you get your Ruby news? (Multiple) (Still using Ruby)
   • Hacker News (69)
   • Reddit (124)
   • Ruby Flow (110)
   • Ruby Weekly (114)
   • Twitter (77)
   • Other (12)
     • ThoughtBot
     • Black Bytes
     • GitHub
     • Other People
     • Meetups
     • Work
     • Facebook
     • IRC
     • A Fresh Cup
     • Ruby Facets
     • Ruby Rouges
     • Sitepoint
7. Do you want more Ruby-focused conferences? (Still using Ruby)
   • Yes
   • No
8. Are there any Ruby-focused podcasts you listen to? (Still using Ruby)
   • Ruby Rogues
   • Ruby Facets
   • Ruby Plus Podcast
   • The Bike Shed
   • Start Here
   • Greater Than Code
   • Ruby 5 (No longer produced)
   • Yakut (Turkish)
   • Giant Robots
   • Ruby Steps
   • Ruby on Rails Podcast
   • Changelog
9. How do you use Ruby? (Still using Ruby)
   • Web Development (214)
   • Scripting (150)
   • App Development (RubyMotion) (12)
   • Other (14)
     • API frameworks
     • CLI Applications
     • Devops
     • ETL jobs
     • GUI (FxRuby)
     • Game development
     • Game prototyping
     • Gtk programming
     • Integration testing
     • Linked data platform
     • Machine bindings
     • Machine learning
     • Scientific experimenting
     • Tool development
     • Web scraping
10. Which web frameworks have you heard of?(Doing web development)
    • Ruby on Rails (214)
    • Sinatra (191)
    • Padrino (125)
    • Hanami (123)
    • Grape (113)
11. Which web frameworks have you used?(Doing web development)
    • Ruby on Rails (214)
    • Sinatra (160)
    • Padrino (30)
    • Hanami (26)
    • Grape (52)
12. Do you have an interest in a framework not listed?(Doing web development)
    • Yes (64)
    • No (150)
13. What frameworks are missing? (Doing web development)
    • Brooklyn (last commit: 1 year ago)
    • Camping (last commit: 11 months ago)
    • Cuba (last commit: 7 months ago)
    • dry-web (last commit: 20 days ago)
    • FP-Sin (last commit: 1 year ago)
    • Gin (last commit: 3 years ago)
    • Hobbit (last commit: 11 months ago)
    • Keight (last commit: 3 months ago)
    • Lux (last commit: 2 months ago)
    • Mustermann  (last commit: 13 days ago)
    • NYNY (last commit: 1 year ago)
    • Nancy (last commit: 3 years ago)
    • Pakyow (last commit: 10 days ago)
    • Praxis (last commit: 5 months ago)
    • Rack::App (last commit: today)
    • Rackstep (last commit: 2 months ago)
    • Ramaze (last commit: 8 months ago)
    • Rambutan (last commit: 3 years ago)
    • Roda (last commit: 3 days ago)
    • Simple Ruby CGI
    • Syro (last commit: 3 months ago)
    • Trailblazer (last commit: 7 days ago)
    • Volt (last commit: 1 year ago)
    • Webmachine (last commit: 9 months ago)
14. Anything you wish frameworks did differently? (Doing web development)
    • There were several responses to this making it hard to format all the data. This is a lesson learned for future surveys. For the time being, here are some that stood out.
    • Frontend
      • Templating
      • View architecture
      • Using Javascript tooling
      • Websockets
    • Design Patterns
      • Easier long-term use
      • Functional approaches
      • More SOLID
    • Community
      • Working together to build Ruby
      • Better vision of what gem is “best” for a given task
    • Performance
15. Have you ever made a Ruby Gem?
    • Yes (148)
    • No (75)
16. Have you ever contributed to Open Source?
    • Yes (146)
    • No (78)
17. Are you familar with Ruby 3x3?
    • Yes (116)
    • No (109)

18. What other languages do you have an interest in? (Multiple)

    • Elixir (133)
    • Go (76)
    • Javascript (151)
    • PHP (30)
    • Java (44)
    • C# (27)
    • None (2)
    • Other (62)
    • Swift (9)
    • Lua (2)
    • Crystal (11)
    • R (1)
    • Python (13)
    • C (7)
    • Rust (12)
    • Clojure (4)
    • C++ (5)
    • Haskell (4)
    • Scala (2)
    • Elm (4)
    • Kotlin (1)
    • F# (1)
    • PowerShell (1)
    • Objective-C (1)
    • Coffeescript (1)
    • Bash (1)
19. Country of Participant
    • Argentina
    • Austrailia
    • Austria
    • Belarus
    • Belgium
    • Brazil
    • Bulgaria
    • Canada
    • Croatia
    • Czech Republic
    • Denmark
    • Ethiopia
    • Finland
    • France
    • Germany
    • India
    • Israel
    • Italy
    • Japan
    • Netherlands
    • Niger
    • Norway
    • Pakistan
    • Poland
    • Portugal
    • Romania
    • Russian Federation
    • Singapore
    • Slovakia
    • Spain
    • Sweden
    • Taiwan
    • Thailand
    • Turkey
    • Ukraine
    • United Kingdom
    • The United States of America
    • Vietnam
20. Would you consider Ruby when starting a new project?
    • Yes (215)
    • No (10)
21. Why? (Asked to yes & no answers)
    • Similar to earlier, there were several responses to this making it hard to format all the data. Here are some that stood out.
      • Syntax
      • Ease of use
      • Experience
      • Right tool for the job (most of the time)
      • Community
      • Gems
      • Maturity
22. Why Not? (Asked to yes & no answers)
    • Similar to earlier, there were several responses to this making it hard to format all the data. Here are some that stood out.
      • Performance (53)
      • Concurrency (14, 3 of which were not familiar with Ruby 3x3)
      • Loss of newness, or “sex-appeal”
      • Desire to learn something else