Future of Ruby

Learn a couple of frameworks; You can start with Sinatra (after doing some bit of ruby foundations), then scale up towards Ruby on Rails; play with some nodejs (and integrate with RoR). This journey into deep code, involves lots of ups-and-downs in the process.

I love Python, I also love Ruby; but being a polyglot helps you decide what tool is best for the job. If you do want to start exploring other languages, you can take a look at Python some more, play with microframeworks like Flask or Bottle and then hack some django apps later.

Another up and coming language is Clojure, with a growing community. Happy hacking.

If a programming language comes into wide use for any amount of time, then it will probably never die, and anyone who is an expert in that language will have opportunities to use that language for a long time.

For example, Fortran and COBOL were among the first high-level programming languages invented (in the 1950s) and they're still in wide use today (albeit not for web development). PHP may seem "old" but most of the WordPress and Drupal server code is written in PHP, so PHP will never go away either.

Thanks to Ruby on Rails, Ruby has come into wide use for making web apps, so it will never die out. If you become an expert in it, you'll have plenty of opportunities for a long time.

Cool to see you're a believer too!

I have a friend who works at Microsoft and specifically with the asp.net team. He told me that Microsoft will introduce many many things next year and they are keeping improving the framework.

I'm not sure about he was telling me, what do you think of asp.net anyway?

Thank you Victor! That is an awesome explanation.

I really want to become a great web app developer so I'm glad that I can get insight like this.

:-) you're welcome dude; just keep looking at different stuff and over time, you'll become a sage and the sky is definitely the limit when you start working on app ideas or a startup ;-) cheers and all the best.

It seems to me that you should first decide what you want to do. Then find out what languages are used to do that.

For example, if you want to write operating system software (e.g. drivers), then Ruby is a terrible choice. If you want to write scientific software, then again, Ruby is a terrible choice. High-end 3D video games? Not with Ruby.

Ruby is popular among web developers, for server-side code, mostly thanks to Ruby on Rails. Ruby is certainly not the only option though: PHP, Python, .NET languages, and even JavaScript (node.js) all have their fervent supporters when it comes to writing server code for the web. They all work fine. They all have their happy communities.

Thanks Troy!

I'm mostly interested in building web apps and websites, not OS software or 3D video games.

My question was more so focused on how valuable Ruby is to learn compared to other languages. I'm trying to create a plan for what I should learn first and specialize. Since learning a language requires a lot of effort I want to be sure that invest my time wisely in what will make me marketable for the longest period of time.

What do you think?