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Dec 12

Ruby on Rails is gaining momentum.

Posted by Luca Cremonini in Ruby on Rails - comments are closed digg this add to delicious

Since its first release by David Heinemeier Hansson in middle 2004, Ruby on Rails has enjoyed strong positive trend both in the open source and web development community. This trend can be easily noticed in Google Trend’s statistics.

It’s interesting to analyze the facts that generated hype in the past years. Main events are related to Rails releases or articles published by major tech-web sites.

The first peak is on June 2005 (A), when Slashdot posted an early review of the book Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier. The first release of RoR dates back to December 13, 2005 (C): simple software movement gains momentum and RoR accelerates its presence both in blogs and tech related news (look at the News reference volume graph). Release 1.1 is on March 2006, and was testified by InternetNews article Ruby on Rails Ramps Up by Sean Michael Kerner (D). Than, 2006 consolidates the trend both for Ruby on Rails and Heinemeier’s company, 37Signals, which is winning several awards (Pc Magazine SMB 20 award, Technology Review Young innovator 2006). And now what will be in 2007? Will the release 1.2 give RoR the visibility it deserves in software panorama? Well, the trend is clear, Rails on Wave is born and will contribute to the spread of this powerful framework.

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Comments

  • Gighen

    Posted on December 12

    you probably forgot to add some other terms http://www.google.com/trends?q=ruby+on+rails%2C+c%23%2C+php&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

  • Luca Cremonini

    Posted on December 13

    Ruby on Rails searches are clearly overwhelmed by C# and PHP. But if these graphs were stock trends, where would you put your money on? Would you bet on PHP or on RoR? If you want to be an early adopter you look for strong trends, you don't mind the overall users base. Think about the Firefox vs Explorer fight...

  • Gighen

    Posted on December 13

    ok ok... actually i agree ruby is one of the most elegant languages i ever seen, and also railsonwave.com is pretty cool, but this post with google trend is a bullshit, IMHO it's probably too early for this kind of considerations ;) you can easily find better arguments to support your opinion about ruby and rails :)

  • Luca Cremonini

    Posted on December 13

    This post emphasizes only that Ruby on Rails has enjoyed strong positive trend since its first release. This is a fact, not an opinion.

  • Tony

    Posted on December 13

    It's actually quite more interesting if you take a closer look at the geographical distribution of trends. More specifically - India. A while ago I wrote an article, exploring software development outsourcing - scroll down to the screenshots, Ruby on Rails searches from India show a nearly vertical line in Septemer 2006!

  • Luca Cremonini

    Posted on December 13

    Tony, I'm glad to see you here. I've read your article (9rules network is deserved, have I ever told you? ;)). Your geographical analysis is very interesting. India, but I think also China, are regions to look at in the future.

  • Tony

    Posted on December 14

    Thank you :) It would be interesting to watch how trends unfold in China, but right now there are simply not enough searches on the topic to display any result. (by the way, no trackbacks?) I've revisited my previous analysis and noticed a flaw in Google Trends. It appears the results fluctuate wildly for low volume queries - something to keep in mind once other regions (such as China) pop up on the Trends screen.

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