Ruby is not a serious programming language, some developers still claim. In the programming language debate, Ruby earns points for developer productivity. Still, legacy codebases keep many teams tied to Ruby. Choose languages that match your constraints and team skills. As a result, the claim Ruby is not a serious programming language still circulates. Consequently, teams choose Ruby when developer productivity matters.
As a result, some teams view Ruby as legacy, not strategic. Ruby offers clear, English-like syntax and a community that values developer joy. For many people, that language is Ruby. Ruby on Rails developer sharing thoughts on software development, technology, and more since 2005. Join 1,500+ Rails developers who decided to get ahead of that curve. Toward the part that says maybe the code should serve the team… not the other way around.
In the 2010s, a wave of companies replaced much of their Ruby infrastructure, and when legacy Ruby code remained, new services were written in higher-performance languages. Choose other languages for maximum raw speed. As a result, many teams use Ruby for web apps where iteration speed matters. Despite limits, Ruby remains practical for many startups and product teams. Yet teams such as Twitter migrated services to Scala to meet scale. Therefore, choose a language that fits your constraints and team skills.
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You may wonder why people are still using Ruby in 2025. Python, though also a slow language, carved out a dominant niche in scientific computing and became the de facto language of AI. What’s more, everything Ruby does, another language now does better, leaving it without a distinct niche. Twitter’s collapse during the 2010 World Cup served as a wake-up call, and the company resolved to migrate its backend to Scala, a more robust language. Ruby, you might’ve guessed, is dynamically typed.
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- The question Sheon Han poses — “Is Ruby a serious programming language?
- Therefore, choose a language that fits your constraints and team skills.
- Ruby wasn’t trying to win benchmarks… it was trying to keep you moving.
- I wrote my first “Hello world” in an awful thing called Java, but programming only began to feel intuitive when I learned JavaScript (I know, I know) and OCaml—both of which fundamentally shaped my tastes.
Is Ruby still a ‘serious’ programming language? Ruby attracts people who care how code feels to write and read. The question Sheon Han poses — “Is Ruby a serious programming language?
In my world… running a software consultancy for a few decades… I’ve never seen a team fail because they chose Ruby. It helped experienced developers rediscover a sense of lightness in their work. It helped small teams build momentum before anxiety caught up. Among newer developers, Python and JavaScript rank much higher. In the early 2000s, when building web applications was cumbersome, Rails offered a one-stop shop for developers. When Danish developer David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH, released Rails in 2004, Ruby ceased to be the province of nice Japanese programmers.
My only experience of Ruby…
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Performance
More so even than Python—a language known for its readability—Ruby reads almost like plain English. What I saw wasn’t a bejeweled tool but a poor little thing that hadn’t quite gotten the news that the world of programming had moved on. It wasn’t until my fourth job that I found myself on a team that mainly used it. Therefore, judge the language by requirements, not slogans. Because Ruby powers many real products, it clearly has practical utility. Visit the company website and the company blog to read case studies.
On Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey, it’s been slipping in popularity for years, going from a top-10 technology in 2013 to 18th this year—behind even Assembly. The main code bases of Airbnb, GitHub, Twitter, how to create an invoice in quickbooks Shopify, and Stripe were built on it. It survives because of its parasitic relationship with Ruby on Rails, the web framework that enabled Ruby’s widespread adoption and continues to anchor its relevance.
Context for the programming language debate
- Gratitude for a community that believes programming can be expressive.
- On Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey, it’s been slipping in popularity for years, going from a top-10 technology in 2013 to 18th this year—behind even Assembly.
- Visit the company website and the company blog to read case studies.
- Because Ruby powers many real products, it clearly has practical utility.
- In my world… running a software consultancy for a few decades… I’ve never seen a team fail because they chose Ruby.
The future of programming is fuzzy for everyone. Gratitude for a language what is a tax preparer that centers the human being. But the sentiment wasn’t nostalgia. A detail reaching for meaning that wasn’t actually connected to the point.
OK so I am using Ruby for the last 13 years…
And if you need a reminder that seriousness isn’t the reliable signal people wish it were… Readability will matter more as AI writes more code. The future won’t be owned by one paradigm or one language or one ideology.
Ruby has real strengths, and you should weigh them carefully. Because it sounds decisive, the phrase spreads quickly in forums and hiring posts. We will weigh trade-offs, compare alternatives, and survey real-world use cases. Because Rails popularized web development, Ruby shaped many major codebases.
However, software development trends still value rapid iteration. Because Ruby powered many early web successes, its influence is real. If you prioritize fast iteration and developer happiness, Ruby still makes sense.
Therefore, decisions should weigh developer productivity against throughput needs. Ruby earned its place by prioritizing developer joy and fast what is wrong if a company doesn’t complete the closing entries iteration. Therefore, evaluate needs, not slogans, when choosing a language.
Ruby doesn’t seem to be for them. It’s how sustainable software gets made. GitHub held the world’s source code together for years using Ruby. That’s not an indictment… that’s success. Ruby wasn’t trying to win benchmarks… it was trying to keep you moving. Ruby made programming approachable.