This is one more article about one more language and I am one more person trying to convince you that this way is better, right? Not necessarily, but give me time to explain. I am a regular person without a usual background in Computer Sciences. I studied Psychology for years before realizing what I wanted to do for a living was code and I believe that everyone who wants to experiment with this should have at least a chance to try.
Development can be fun and it’s for everyone and that’s why I’m writing this: to all the people who want to start over and don’t know how, to all beginners who don’t have a usual career path, to people on different backgrounds who wants to give a technology a chance and change their lives but don’t know if they really can because they are used to listen “this is not for you” or even for those who already work with technology but want to work with another language and are kind of afraid.
This is for you. Technology is for everyone.
So, how can Ruby help you with that?
1 – COMMUNITY
When Yukihiro Matsumoto, also known as Matz, launched Ruby in 1995 his main goal in creating a new coding language was making a tool that helped every developer be more productive and happier at his work.
The community around Ruby also has a lot of this in mind; in early 2000 they came out with a motto: MINASWAN. That means Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice. I think that’s why Ruby has this big, diverse and beautiful community that helps each other. They have a lot of conferences around the world, a lot of meetups in a lot of cities that happen every week and online forums that keep them connected. They also produce a lot of free content for the community and are very friendly with beginners and this is very good news for an outsider.
2 – LEARNING CURVE
There are a lot of languages out there and every one of them will demand hard work and study, but there are some elements in Ruby that are very beginner-friendly. The syntax of Ruby is clean and intuitive, it is designed to be close to the English language, so you don’t have to spend much time memorizing anything to write code.
Unlike javascript, for example, you don’t need to worry about ending your lines with a semicolon (;). And unlike Python, your code will work even with the wrong indentation – but please, indent your code – it’s a good practice! The point here is: Ruby is very smart and easy to write and read.
3 – RAILS
Ruby on Rails was created by David Heinemeier Hanson in 2004 and is the most famous framework built with the Ruby programming language. The Rails framework is open-source and allows you to build and deliver applications very quickly.
According to Similartech.com, currently over 403,720 websites are using Ruby on Rails and there are 199,772 unique domains. Some of the most famous examples of applications using Ruby On Rails are Shopify, Airbnb, Github, and of course, our beloved Pipefy!
4 – YES, WE ARE HIRING
There is a myth that Ruby is dying since it’s been a long time since it was launched, but every year this programming language shows up more and more consolidated – and not dead. Last year (2020), in the past Stack Overflow research, Ruby was among the fifteen technologies most used professionally. Here, at Pipefy, we are always with open doors to good Ruby on Rails professionals in our squads! You can always check our jobs here.
And if you are at the beginning of your career journey you can join us as a Young Gun Tech, just like me! The Young Gun Tech Program is our Software Engineer Trainee Program that will advance your technical skills at the next level in both the front and backend, besides the other soft skills that are required to be a great software engineer.
After giving you a bunch of reasons to not just start coding but start coding in Ruby, I want to reinforce my initial idea that code can be for everyone – it’s for you, it’s for me, it’s for anyone who wants to do it. You don’t need to be immediately good at it, you don’t need a special talent, you just need to give it a try and keep trying and you know what? It can be really fun!
It’s not about the code, or at least, not only about the code. Technology is also about user experience, accessibility, social responsibility, culture, and diversity. Technology can and needs to be used as a social change tool, because it is, above all, about people.
_ About the Writer: Yasmin Valim is a Young Gun Tech at Pipefy