Lesser-known Facts about Variables in Ruby

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this_knee@reddit

What percentage of developers are even using Ruby? Or even Ruby on Rails? And why?

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HorizonShadow@reddit

I use Ruby daily at work, and personal projects.

Rails for web development, Home | DragonRuby for game development.

Familiarity is all. Picked it up when it was popular, got tired of learning the new flavor of the year every year and just threw in the towel and stick to ruby now.

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shevy-java@reddit

All I know is that the number has been dropping.

Though, those using rails, are not necessarily "real" rubyists. But the numbers of both have been dropping indeed.

As for "why" - there are many reasons, both for using ruby, as well as switching to other languages. The most important question would be: "why are new users NOT choosing ruby". That is in my opinion one of the key question(s).

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this_knee@reddit

I’m curious to hear a few of the reasons to choose ruby over other popular choices available.

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DonaldStuck@reddit

Ruby needs static typing and it needs it like yesterday.

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AnnoyedVelociraptor@reddit

I absolutely hate in how many different ways you can write stuff in Ruby. It makes it super hard to switch between libraries.

Also, Ruby has this thing where you can have a function that refers to a variable outside of the function.

Then when you invoke the function it'll magically pick up that variable. So the function is like pasted in the new location. This makes it absolutely horrible to test, as behavior can be influenced in way too many ways.

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shevy-java@reddit

Not sure I understand the complaint.

In regards to "how many different ways you can write stuff in Ruby" - in theory ruby has the "more than one way to do things" flexibility. In reality, many ways are worse.

Jeremy gives several examples of this in his book polished ruby and I agree with many of his statements.

For instance:

module Foo
  def self.bar

versus the class << extension way.

The self.bar is in my opinion the correct way. Or avoiding class variables (which jeremy also recommends) - agreed on that.

The good thing is that one can avoid a ton of things in ruby and still end up writing really elegant and clear code.

I don't understand the "magically pick up a variable". You don't mean local variables right? Perhaps some code could be shown to explain what you mean; right now I don't understand it.

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shevy-java@reddit

Ruby needs a new strategic goal. It's struggling right now. TIOBE has tons of issues, but the long-term trend warrants some serious changes, including the new users problem. I chose Ruby a long time ago over Python after having read https://www.artima.com/articles/the-philosophy-of-ruby (I still think it was the right choice) and I have been using Ruby ever since (also perfectly fine, matz is great) - but ruby really needs a complete new alignment and strategic goal, from A to Z, from bottom to top. There are also some changes in the ecosystem that moved in the opposite way: now you need 2FA for reporting issues on the bug tracker (yikes), after 100.000 downloads you can no longer remove your own gem, along with boring legalese https://blog.rubygems.org/2025/03/20/introducing-new-policies.html, the documentation is amazingly getting even worse and worse rather than better (not all projects, mind you; those who write great documentation are epic, but many hate writing documentation and then drop off, to never again use ruby). Sorry but there needs to be a systematic approach here. Each small problem needs realistic ideas and then execution of those ideas via actionable things that can be done. If I am a young 20 years old person today, would I be more likely to pick python or pick ruby? We all know the answer, so now ruby really needs to dig deep to change that answer. Idling away doing nothing isn't going to solve that problem, it'll only get worse - you only have to sniff at the dust of grandpa perl here.

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rooktakesqueen@reddit

How is this different than any other language with lexical scoping?