The Ruby programming language has been around for more than two decades. It constantly features on the TIOBE Index, Stack Overflow Developer Survey, and GitHub State of the Octoverse as a popular programming language. While the last decade has seen hundreds of new programming languages emerge (and wither, for some), Ruby remains popular and relevant.
When coupled with an easy-to-understand syntax, it is no surprise that Ruby is one of the most frequently recommended programming languages for beginners. To help bridge the gap for developers new to the Chef ecosystem, we are pleased to announce two new Ruby courses on Learn Chef.
If you’d like to get started to learn Ruby right away, head over to Learn Chef for the Ruby Essentials course.
Why Ruby is still in demand
Let us look at some of the reasons why Ruby has managed to maintain its popularity.
Beginner-friendly
When Yukihiro Matsumoto (aka Matz) was designing Ruby, he wanted to create a scripting language more powerful than Perl and more object-oriented than Python while still being immensely productive and straightforward.
Ruby code is crisp and reads almost like plain English, hence making it easy to understand. Additionally, Ruby is very forgiving of errors. Even with errors in the code, your code will compile and run until it encounters the error.
Industry popularity
Given how intuitive and productive it was, Ruby quickly became the preferred programming language for several Silicon Valley start-ups. Chef Software, alongside other popular companies like GitHub, Twitch, and AngelList, uses Ruby to power their applications.
Ruby also quickly was adopted by large enterprises that started using it as a practical method to deliver proof-of-concept solutions. Ruby quickly transitioned to internal, back-end tools, given the ease of deployment and extending applications.
Thriving community
With over 100k followers on Stack Overflow and an increasing number of GitHub contributors, the Ruby community remains very active. Stats show that the Ruby community is very welcoming to beginners, and out of all the popular languages, Ruby-based questions are 3rd most likely to be answered.
Moreover, considering how many applications are powered by Ruby and keeping in mind the number of enterprise and start-up companies using Ruby, it is no surprise that Ruby developers are in high demand. Even at Chef, we are always looking out for ruby developers. Ruby is one of the top five searched programming skills on multiple hiring platforms, including LinkedIn. Furthermore, the average base salary for a Ruby developer is north of $150k (annual).
Get started with Ruby on Learn Chef
Now that you know why Ruby is still so popular and want to leap into learning Ruby, we have got you covered. We have launched two new Ruby courses on Learn Chef – Ruby Essentials and Ruby Resources. Here is a brief rundown of what you’ll learn from them.
Ruby Essentials – Your first step into the world of Ruby
- Discover how to install Ruby and understand the basic syntax and expressions
- Learn how to handle the control flow using operators and loops
- See how to manage a collection of objects/elements using arrays
- Understand Ruby functions and classes and their implementation
- Experiment with file input and output and HTTP requests
- Experience testing your code
Ruby Resources – An introduction to the hidden Ruby features
- Access Ruby’s built-in features and libraries using IRB
- Learn how to work with functions and methods
- Explore Ruby libraries and gems
- Traverse additional features using Pry
- Debug your own code
So, head over to Learn Chef and register yourself for the courses and get learning. While you are at it, also check out the other courses that we have tailored for you. You will be awarded a cool badge on completion of each course. If you have questions or concerns, you can always find us on the Community Chef Slack or email us.