Hi Caue, I don't think any language is dead in 2022, and we still see a lot of Cobol and Fortran out there, so Ruby is not going to die for sure. However, based on the market, you'll be better off learning Goland and Python. For example, for data science, machine learning, and similar areas, Python is the default language while backend API, services, and other general purpose Goland is becoming the preferred.

I hope this helps.

I feel most productive using go. It has all the features I need and doesn't throw road blocks in your way as you learn. Rust is the most difficult to learn as borrow checking and other features can puzzle a newcomer for days. Python is a logical next step as it has a huge following, many great libraries, and one can find a gig using python in a heartbeat. Ruby isn't awful, it's just not that popular as the others.

Another reason to use python is that it is not compiled. You can muck around in the interpreter until you figure things out. OTOH, that makes it less performant. You really need to think about your use cases, your interest in lower-lever versus high-level coding, and so on.

I enjoy coding in Python. I think it's minimalistic and readable syntax and lang features are just unparalleled. They are perfect for prototyping and for the software engineering in general. If I'm not wrong Gitlab marked Python as #2 popular language after JavaScript. Beyond that, Python ecosystem and areas of usage are enormous. In areas like ML/DL, it's important to know Python to leverage variety of existing tools and frameworks.

Then, I have learned and worked with Golang. I use it where I think I would need a slightly better performance than in Python. Plus, relatively small and self-contained executable is a great thing to have. If you plan to write distributed systems, extend Kubernetes or do similar things I think Golang is a great choice. It's also simple and straightforward, especially when you want to do effective multithreading. Although I don't like that Golang is more low-level than Python. Sometimes I feel like I need to implement myself too much things.

Now, about Rust. It's my second try to learn Rust. First time I decided to learn Golang as I understood it in 30mins or so while I was struggling to compile/do anything meaningful there for quite a bit. So I personally don't think Rust is super easy. I have got back to learning Rust as it's going to fill one of gaps in my problem solving toolkit - let me write low-level system programs (e.g. linux kernel modules). I don't want to learn "obsolete" C/C++ (my reasons are similar to why Google has recently introduced Carbon - a replacement for C/C++ codebases). If you are not going to tight your life with system-like programming, Rust may be an overkill for you.

Finally, I have never coded in Ruby, so are not going to comment it.

Because it opens endless possibilities you can do anything and everything you want to. from ai to app development to web development.

I'm almost same position as you. 8 years same company with c#. I tried both Python and Golang. I like working with Golang. Check this litte go doc. After reading this document and following its examples, I decided to work with "go" https://www.openmymind.net/assets/go/go.pdf

Since you are very experienced, picking up a language will not take you more than a week. Rust is a very new language. Many startups are still experimenting with it. Golang is very popular nowadays. You can see a lot of golang jobs in the market. The best part is, compiled code is single binary and has a minimal footprint. Rails is a compelling framework; believe me, many websites like Shopify, GitHub, GitLab, etc., are powered by the rails framework. You can also leverage the power of metaprogramming in Ruby. Python is memory and CPU intensive. It is not as performant as the other three. If you want to go into Data Science, Python is the language. Good luck, buddy. Feel free to connect with me: https://twitter.com/avirajkhare00

it is highly recommended to take a look at that survey

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/

Either Python or Golang, for all the enlightened reasons already mentionned in all advices/comments :) Enjoy!

Hi Hüseyin! 1-2) In my experience If you are a Mobile Applications Developer you will have the following responsabilities: - Develop (not designing) both functionality and screens of the app you are working - Consume (not develop) third party or self company owned APIs or Backend services - Distribution tasks. - Mantainance tasks. Now, there will always be companies wishing you know the whole thing (ui/ux, backend, frontend, mobile, cd/ci, data science, etc.). And of course it will be helpful for you to know a little bit of the stuff around mobile development, but it's not very common since it's not part of the responsabilities of a mobile app dev.

3) No, you are not responsable for the designs of your application, that's why companies have Product designers, ux designers, ui designers for preparing the screens, logos, color palettes, etc for products. As a developer your job is to see and examine the designs and take them from Figma, InVision, Zeplin, etc to the Code editor.

4) This is the thing, if you are working as a Mobile Developer you might know about Mobile development, not backend, not frontend, not ui ux. BUT if you know a little about backend that might be helpful although backend should not be your responsability.

I hope this makes sense to you. Cheers!

As a mobile developer, I'm usually a member of a larger team and it's usually another person's responsibility to develop the backend/API, and another person's to do the UX/design. Very very few teams use cross-platform tools like Flutter or React Native, because tools like those tend to make mediocre apps that scale poorly and are impossible to debug, so make sure to get familiar with Swift/iOS or Kotlin/Android (or both).

Hi! I think most of your questions led to these answers:

• Mobile software developers don't responsible for the back-end part, or even graphic design. Of course, the back-end part should be done by a back-end developer. The graphic design, I'd say that if you work on a start-up, you might be the one who does since there isn't much manpower there, but in the larger company, they would have a designer especially in UI/UX. You'll have a mockup for the application that you need to follow. As a developer, you're expected to code, not design.

• I've said that the responsibility isn't yours, but of course, you'll have an advantage over others if you know UI/UX, or back-end as well. That would help you a lot to be a good mobile developer.

Good luck!

Pick Rust. Rust can provide all what you need and has been a major language in blockchain/cryptocurrency industry. Swift is slower than Rust and does not have such support in the networking and domain field. Swift tooling is great only on macOS, therefore you are likely to have troubles on other platforms.

You can use swift of course. It’s more of a question of being performant.

You really want to try some basic operations and find what’s most performant for you.

Rust is wonderful for cloud applications requiring heavy concurrency, it has compile time checking for such things.

Go and C++ could be more performant in your case. Swift is really quite an obtuse language, with a lot of features, some which may complicate your implementation.

Also, you want to consider the market of developers who could help build it. If you use Go or C++ there is a larger collection of people who know the languages than there is with swift.

Native apps are not going to die. Especially not Swift because now Swift can be used to develop cross platform macOS and iOS apps due to the new macs having M1 chips.

If asking about employment opportunities, native will never die out. There will always be opportunity for work in native mobile applications. There are also many advantages of using native over cross platform such as always having access to the latest APIs and developer libraries that may not be available to cross-platform without some native development involved or can wait until someone develops a bridge for you.

If you are asking about what you should develop with first? It really depends. React-Native is great for building proto-types or basic MVP application that doesn't require any of the latest and greatest features Apple has to offer at the moment. But if you're asking what to learn? I would say native will always give you a larger advantage as it will give you a good foundation in mobile development and provide you access to the latest native libraries. It is also a useful skill that can give you an edge in cross-platform mobile like react-native because you will most definitely encounter a situation where you will have to go down to the to native side to extend functionality or utilize APIs that are not yet out of the box.

The decision comes down to your goals and needs.

If you want to be able to create any kind of iOS app, simple or complex, learn Swift. It's indispensable if you're building specialised apps like video editing, augmented reality, machine learning or anything that uses iOS-specific APIs such as App Clips.

But if you just want to create apps that make HTTP requests and display static content such as text or basic video and music, React Native would do just fine, and you can publish the same code to Android. This is a no-brainer choice if you're on a low budget.

And if you know both, you can use both in the same app. You can add React Native screens or components inside a Swift app.

I would suggest to bet more on Swift! I have developed act in React and Javascript in the past and played around with Swift a little... the performances of native code vs Javascript are way too slow compared to swift native app!

Now even more than ever M1 chip will give a boost, but if it gives a boost to JS it will give a boost also to native apps. I would seriously consider Swift more than Javascript, React or even Electron!

"Should I just learn Swift first due to the pros of the native apps?". React Native builds Native Apps. Technologies like ionic does NOT build native apps, but React Native does it.

Learning Swift seems to be a really bad idea from my point of view. Learning JavaScript is all what you need. Why? Because then Frontend, Backend, and Mobile Dev, is simple, because it's all JavaScript.

Mobile Native Development Apps will never die. Cross Plataform like React Native only exists to save time and costs for startups mainly, which is extraordinary, and indispensable often of course. But when the App get popular enough, it will probably will move to Native Development. Several improvements.

Less than 20% of the market is IOS, the rest is Android. Any developer must produce for Android and maybe support IOS. If you prototype on IOS you have to restart again for Android. React and JavaScript will run on IOS.

Ruby on Rails is far from being dead. In fact, this is a very popular choice in early-stage startups, given how fast and easily it allows them to launch their product and iterate on it.

Even at more mature companies, you'll still find a ton of opportunities. Not for internal tools or legacy codebases, but for actual production workloads: web apps, APIs, etc...

Some may tell you that Ruby doesn't scale, but is it really Ruby that doesn't scale, or the code they wrote?

Languages have trends. Sometimes, recruiters will try to take you one way or another to meet their own agenda. Don't always listen to what you hear. Long live Ruby! Long live Rails!

You can’t directly compare RnR and Javascript, since the first is a framework (Ruby would be the language), and Javascript is a language. RnR even uses quite an amount of Javascript. I think that Ruby, and Rails, are design by improving on previous languages, and shifting the perspective from speed to readability and general developer friendliness. Opposed to that, Javascript did not have any design goals at all, and seems to be repeating the errors of all language designs that existed before. “Knowing Javascript” would not be a selling point to me when hiring someone, there should be mentioned specific javascript frameworks. And I’d always try to find someone who has experience in multiple languages. So my advice is to to learn RnR first, you get a head start, Javascript will just come along with it. And you can distinct yourself from other people that claim web development knowledge because they have done one javascript tutorial :-)

I know I'm cheating by recommending both, but that's because I don't think you can go wrong either way.

I've been working with RoR full-time for the past 3.5 years and I really enjoy it. Compared to JavaScript, it's so much easier to read which is amazing from a team collaboration perspective. As for the perception that it's dead, when I recently started looking for new opportunities, I received probably an average of 10-15 calls a week from recruiters looking for people with RoR experience. Also, if you look around for average wages of developers of different languages, Ruby is fairly high up there (higher than JavaScript if I recall correctly), probably because there are fewer of us around and we can command a premium.

However, that said, if your goal is to find a full-time engineering position quickly, then JavaScipt certainly is the flavor of the month and any product with a frontend component will need it. Even our enterprise SaaS platform which didn't use a frontend framework (React, Angular, Vue, etc...) required us to integrate JS packages and write custom ones. JavaScript is probably more versatile than Ruby at the moment and it seems like new frameworks are being written for it all the time, but remember that Ruby was also the preferred language by almost all companies 5-10 years ago.

At the end of the day, I would go with the language that you enjoy writing the most as you'll be using it a lot in your workplace. If you aren't having fun at work, that's a lot of time spent suffering.

One of the things that we I often hear since I started programming, is that languages will die. Ruby and JavaScript are both one of the most popular languages today. And popular languages just doesn’t go to the top and die.

So, F*** what people say about languages dying. Go ahead and learn both, or choose one to learn. But also learn data structures, design patterns and testing. This is basic for awesome developers and a lot are missing that.

ruby got better and better, rails is outstanding. Listen David Heinemeier Hansson : https://corecursive.com/045-david-heinemeier-hansson-software-contrarian I recommend you to read Otis Meyer https://www.informit.com/store/practical-object-oriented-design-an-agile-primer-using-9780134445601#largeCover and https://eloquentjavascript.net/ Don't bother what's they say, just enjoy programming

Yo Matt,

I've been in the Ruby on Rails game for twenty years. For the last ten, Rails has been declared deceased. ;) But in reality, Rails is still going strong. The jobs are highly paid and fun. All the pros you list are valid. Yes it is a beautiful language, the OO makes sense, it's dynamic and expressive, and the ecosystem is top shelf. What's to dislike? There are a lot of Rails websites out there. And new ones get created every day too.

Now, to address the elephant in the room....

Ruby is quirky. Since the syntax is pretty different from PHP, and core developers being opinionated, some people just see drama. When Node.JS got slightly usable, they moved over to that. Node.JS is very c/PHP-like after all in its syntax. Many engineering managers will just select the ecosystem that is biggest. Node.JS is a lot bigger. But if you don't care about going a little off the beaten path sometimes, Ruby in my opinion still, after all this time, gives me joy when I use it.

Also important: to this day, I can build everything I want. Ruby, Rails and many gems are being actively maintained. Security vulnerabilities are discovered and corrected. New developments still find their way into the language. For myself, I know that the anemic JS standard library would just frustrate me to no end.... every wheel is invented time and again. Ruby's standard library isn't as voluminous, but it's a lot more diverse and useful.