# Ruby

359 Hacker News commenters recommended Ruby and 162 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 15 years (38 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as an elegant, expressive language that makes developers happy and productive, especially for scripting and glue code; critics say metaprogramming and dynamic typing make large codebases hard to follow.

## Why people recommend it

- Elegant, expressive, joyful to write (7 comments): "Ruby is the most elegant and expressive general purpose programming language that has reached a significant level of maturity and large audience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48260472)) "Ruby's syntax is pretty accessible and powerful and Matz was explicit about having developer happiness as a design goal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46371533)) "one of the most pleasant and elegant languages I've used… but the footguns it comes equipped with rival those of Perl." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849989))
- Fast development and productivity (4 comments): "Languages like ruby and python are not fast, but their syntax is so straight forward, the effort to go from a to z is a fraction of other languages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46111562)) "Type free languages like Lisp, Python and Ruby have faster software development times than languages that use types." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46399927)) "If our competitors voluntarily choose to use tools that are demonstrably less productive, that's great news for us." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46402034))
- Great for scripting and glue (5 comments): "Ruby's FileUtils#sh (combined with %W{} array literals, %x{} output capturing and regular #{} string interpolation) provides a pretty low-impedance interface." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49210973)) "amenable to modern development practices and tools like source control and off the shelf text editors, and usable for Unix scripts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826180)) "I use it for prototyping, oneliners for ETL and to glue different moving parts in a system or network together" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246741))
- Powerful metaprogramming and flexibility (3 comments): "Python is generally slower, uses significant whitespace in its syntax, and lacks the metaprogramming features of Ruby" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46385187)) "The ability to cleanly remold any part of the system with minimal friction, to suit the app you're building right now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859455)) "Ruby, and Ruby on Rails is a treasure trove of little handy bits you can use if you just know where to look." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851002))

## What people warn about

- Hard to read others' code (4 comments): "the terse syntax combined with lack of static types and regular use of generated identifiers turns large codebases into Where's Wally" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856065)) "Being able to open any class (or object) and add new methods to it makes tracking how execution works extremely difficult." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243237)) "I feel like a damn genius when I write it, but want to pull my hair out when I have to read someone else's code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996183))
- Footguns from mutability and monkeypatching (4 comments): "Everything being mutable by default, including strings, is about as big a foot gun as you can find in a high level language." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46386788)) "See languages like Ruby or JavaScript, which are memory safe but not sandboxable due to all the monkeypatching they allow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062473)) "one of the most pleasant and elegant languages I've used… but the footguns it comes equipped with rival those of Perl." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849989))
- Declining community and adoption (2 comments): "The language is still great as-is, but if there is no solution to lack of new developers, ruby will just follow perl's path to extinction." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48668563)) "Ruby is still a great programming language, but it really needs to intensify the effort to get out of the pit-of-decline." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48260235))
- Slow performance (2 comments): "This is a language that explicitly sacrifices important stuff like the strength of automatic checks possible and performance in lieu of developer ergonomics." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48247423)) "Ruby originally blew up because Rails was a way people enjoyed writing backend code, despite the speed issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48262281))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend
- [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend
- [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend
- [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend
- [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Ruby", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ruby/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).