Ruby's decline in Language Promise Index: A nuanced view

DRANK

Ruby Promise Index Dropped - Let's take a look When I saw the new JetBrains Developer Ecosystem Survey results ( one detail stood out. #Ruby dropped from 19 place to 20 in the Language Promise Index. The only one in the top 20 with a negative score. Ouch. At first glance, that feels discouraging. But when you look deeper, it’s not necessarily bad news. It is more like a reflection of where Ruby is as a language and community. First, there’s the survey bias. Ruby devs aren’t exactly the loudest bunch online. Compare our activity to Rust’s meme factories, and you’ll get the idea. A big part of the Ruby crowd are senior devs quietly building stable systems, not filling out surveys or chasing trends. Then there’s maturity. Ruby and Rails are not new kids anymore. We haven’t seen a major “shiny” framework for a decade. But the old ones still get the job done. Rails has a steep learning curve, sure. But once you internalize its conventions, development speed skyrockets. The tradeo…