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Ruby

Posted by Jason Cornwall
Jason Cornwall
9,645 Points

Is Ruby on Rails still a viable career option?

I'm close to finishing the Front-End track and I'm really excited to dive into a Back-End technology so that I can start developing my own web applications. There has been a lot of hype around Node.js and the MEAN stack, but I have also seen quite a few jobs for Ruby developers although it is not talked about nearly as much.

My question is, is it still a good idea to learn Ruby & Ruby on Rails as an aspiring web developer for a future career? Id love to hear some input from developers in the community. Thanks!

2 Answers

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points
Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points

Yes, Ruby and Ruby on Rails are still growing, and evolving, and it still has an alive community. Rails 5 has some awesome new features, including live data feeds similar to node/mean/meteor. Lots of existing companies/websites started with Rails many years ago, and most aren't going to re-write to Node, when similar can be accomplished in Rails.

I think you'll be just fine career wise, and don't be afriad to dabble in node, it'll only make you strong. I spend about 70% of my energy in Node/meteor, and about 30% in ruby and rails.

Jason Cornwall
Jason Cornwall
9,645 Points

Thanks Kevin

Andrew Stelmach
Andrew Stelmach
12,583 Points
Andrew Stelmach
Andrew Stelmach
12,583 Points

Ruby on Rails is a perfectly employable skillset. HOWEVER....

Learning Rails now is absolutely the worst possible thing you can do. That's exactly what I did and I got pretty good at it (see my Github CV in my profile), but it wasn't enough to get a job. You end up knowing how to use Rails to a certain degree but have no idea what's going on under the hood, and that's important.

I ended up doing a coding bootcamp and that cost me 8 grand. I got a job after that. To get a job you need knowledge of:

SOLID principles,
TDD,
Object-Oriented design principles,
Rack,
and more...

There's too much to explain and, to be honest, I've written about this several times in this forum but I don't have a link to those posts - add me on facebook if you want and we can chat on there.