This document discusses the future of the Ruby programming language and community. It addresses common concerns that Ruby is declining or dying due to decreasing popularity. However, it argues that Ruby still has value due to its focus on programmer happiness and that other languages are now adopting features that originated in Ruby like literals and multimethods. It concludes by acknowledging that while Ruby may not be the dominant language in 20 years, the community will continue to be an important part of the programmer experience.

1. What’s Eating Ruby?
The Future of Ruby the Language
and the Community

2. Joshua Ballanco
@manhattanmetric
https://github.com/jballanc

3. Joshua Ballanco
@manhattanmetric
https://github.com/jballanc

4. https://circleci.com/
sayhi@circleci.com

5. What’s up with Ruby?
“Ruby is maturing up nicely”
“Ruby isn't cool any more”
http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-ruby/

6. What’s up with Ruby?
“Ruby is a dying language”
http://rubini.us/2013/10/15/introducing-rubinius-x/

7. What’s up with Ruby?
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/Ruby.html

8. Oh NOES!!1!
Is Ruby Dying?
Are you at a Ruby
Conference?

9. http://rubyconferences.org/

11. Take a trip with me…

12. Take a trip with me…
Whoops!

13. …a little further

14. …a little further

15. “Begin at the beginning”
C

16. “Begin at the beginning”
C

17. “Begin at the beginning”
Java

18. “Begin at the beginning”
Perl

19. A Better Way
Do we really need header files,
verbose types, and crazy sigils?

20. A Better Way
Ruby
"I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in
the world to be productive, and to enjoy
programming, and to be happy. That is the
primary purpose of Ruby language."

21. A Better Way
Why didn’t C, Java, or Perl “optimize for
programmer happiness”?
• Technical limitations
• Laziness
• Complacency

22. The Problem…
“Optimize for programmer happiness”
– Matz
“We’re not happy…”
– Every programmer
…ever

23. More happiness…
Literals
Common Lisp

24. More happiness…
Literals
Clojure

25. More happiness…
Pipes
C

26. More happiness…
Pipes
C

27. More happiness…
Pipes
C

28. More happiness…
Pipes
Ruby

29. More happiness…
Pipes
Go

30. More happiness…
Multimethods
Ruby

31. More happiness…
Multimethods
Julia

32. Is ?

33. Ruby’s Still Got It
• When was the last time you used threads?
• Is there another (better) way to do concurrency?

34. Ruby’s Still Got It
• Don’t let them tell you dynamic typing is no good!
Ruby

35. Ruby’s Still Got It
• Don’t let them tell you dynamic typing is no good!
Julia

36. Ruby’s Still Got It
• Community is a wonderful thing…

37. A Ruby Wish List
• JavaScript is assembly for the web

38. A Ruby Wish List
• Mobile is the (near-term) future

39. A Ruby Wish List
• Maybe types aren’t all bad?
• Kill the “sacred cow”!

40. Will I be using Ruby 20
years from now?
Maybe…
Maybe not…
I’ll always be a part of the
Ruby Community

41. fin