Should I Use Ruby?

One of the hardest decisions when you are going to start your programming career is choosing the first language to learn. It seems everyone has a biased opinion on the matter or something to make them take one side. Ask people around your or ask on some online question and answer website, and you will get a lot of different opinions. Sometimes you will even see that the people are starting to fight to establish their opinions.

Different Opinions

It is not always that they are biased. Many people are not an expert in more than one language, so they do not know what great value other languages can provide. Many experts will also give you poor suggestions. It doesn't mean that they are ignorant about different programming languages. Maybe they are expert in programming and technical things only, but they do not know the current industry trends, ot maybe they do not know which language profession is paying well. Maybe they have limited experience or knowledge about the job world.

And too often emotions contribute to poor suggestions with people seemingly to be emotionally attached to a specific programming language. It may be the case that he or she found success in their career due to the specific programming language.

Most programmers will not actually understand your situation and won’t be able to see thing from your perspective. Most of them do not care about your educational background and probably won’t give you the best suggestion. Most of them actually do not care about what you want to do by learning your first programming language.

Remember: Most people, instead of steering you in the right direction, will just be trying to win the argument. So, don't just jump on the bandwagon. Do your homework and pick your language according to your needs.

How To Decide

There are many ways you can decide, but to make the right decision, ask yourself some questions. I am going to list some questions for you but these are not the only questions you should ask. Every person in the world is unique and everyone's needs and situations are different but these are a good place to start:

• Why do you want to learn programming?
• Do you want to learn programming as a hobby or to advance your career?
• What is your career goal?
• How long in your career do you want to continue programming?
• Do you want to try freelancing or do you want a job?
• Do you want to learn it quick or do you have a lot of time on your hands?
• Does your educational background suite the work of a programmer or do you want to invest extra time to make it fit with you?
• Is it for some educational purpose, scientific research or is it for your living?
• Which platform do you want to work on? Do you want to develop games, mobile applications, desktop applications or web applications?
• Where do you want to see yourself after you have completed learning it?

You might have some other questions in your mind. Ask them, write the answers on a piece of paper and come back here to read the rest of this article.

Why Choose Ruby

Ruby is one of the most popular modern programming languages. It is a high level programming language which means it hides most of the internal details and focus on having the real work done by abstracting a lot of things for you. If you ever heard the buzzword Object Oriented Programming Languages then you can count Ruby as one of them.

In different sections below I am going to discuss various reasons for which you should choose Ruby. Think carefully whether you are looking for these benefits or not.

Easy To Learn

If you are not willing to go a long way just to have simple work done then Ruby is for you. In Java, C, C++, C# and other languages you not only have to write a lot of code to have a simple task done, but also you will have to understand a lot of concepts. Just to show "Hello World" on your display you have write a lot of code and learn a lot of things. But, in Ruby, it is just one line of code.

puts "Yahoo! I have written my first line of code in Ruby!"

Does that look big? What about the conventional Hello World program?

puts "Hello, World!"

You have just created your first program in Ruby so easily without even starting to learn Ruby. Congrats!

Great Career Opportunities

After learning many other programming languages you will not find an opportunity for your career. You will have to sit idle or wait for some prince to come and save you like Cinderella wished. But after becoming an expert in Ruby, you will not have to wait for a single day if you know which doors to knock on for opportunity. Actually if you become good at it, opportunities will knock on your door. Many Silicon Valley startups prefer Ruby and Ruby programmers to make their dream come true.

And if you don’t want a boss breathing down your neck and want to jump into the world of freelancing then you will not be disappointed.

Whether you work as a freelancer or get a 9-to-5 job, you will get a competitive price and salary compared to other programming careers.

Availability Of Great Frameworks And Tools

To have your work done properly you do not need thousands of frameworks and tools if you have the ones that are perfect. Ruby on Rails is one of the world's most popular full stack web development framework written in Ruby. It is such a great framework that other frameworks in other languages steal ideas and concepts from it. And the best part is it is all in one thing. There are a lot of job opportunities open for Ruby on Rails.

There are a lot of other framework ranging from daily life tasks to machine learning and AI in Ruby. You do not need to worry about the ecosystem of Ruby. Once you get started with it, you will not be able to forget to thank me for suggesting Ruby.

Other Benefits

Ruby has a great active online community. Whenever you are stuck somewhere you can just go to various Ruby communities and talk about your problem. Ruby guys are active and friendly. You will never be disappointed. Just a Google search will bring up solutions to the problem your are facing, because a lot of other people faced the same when they started. So, the uneven field is already leveled for you.

Ruby has complete documentation. If those docs are not suitable for you then you can find a lot of other resources online along with a huge amount of tutorials, articles and books.

When Ruby Is Not For You

Ruby is not a tonic for everything and is not the solution for every problem we face in the world of computer science. If you want to create another operating system, then Ruby is obviously not for you. If you want to develop mobile apps, then Ruby is nowhere close to a good choice. If you want to develop desktop games then you have many choices in Ruby but those are not good for developing a game of business value.

Many Ruby lovers might tell you that you can do anything with Ruby. They are not liars but are just impractical thinkers. When it is just possible to do something in some language, we call it "proof of concept" but to make it usable in a real life situation and make it fit for business then that is a different story.

Conclusion

Ruby is a great language for you but it might not fit your needs. You have to think about yourself, your needs, your career and you have to think what exactly you want. There is no language that is fit for each and every need. Don't just jump on the bandwagon and don't live in the world of imagination. Think twice, think carefully and choose the language of your career.

Still no sure if Ruby is the right fit? Check out our JavaScript intro: First Steps In JavaScript With Node.js

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