is ruby on rails (or at least the community) dying?

Question

This is an honest question and I am not trolling.

As a newbie to rails I've been search for good rails resources. But I've been noticing many sites that apparently were once popular now being completely abandoned. Some examples:

• http://www.softiesonrails.com/ - last updated Feb 2010
• http://www.therailsway.com/ - last updated Aug 2009
• http://nubyonrails.com/ - last updated Aug 2009
• http://www.railsenvy.com/ - nothing there now
• http://edgerails.info/ - last updated Feb 2010

Am I just coincidentally going to all the wrong websites/blogs (even though they're the top hits on google) or is the rails community slowly dying off? If I just happen to be going to the wrong sites can someone please point me to some currently updated sites?

Answer 1

NO! It's healthy and alive!

• http://rubyflow.com - aggregated blog content
• http://planetrubyonrails.com - similar

And there are many others...

Answer 2

Ruby on Rails was a Hype. That means a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon because that is what they do: jumping on bandwagons (for a living).

After that hype, many communities popped up, in various languages that mimique Rails. Or try to. Or just took the good ideas and applied them to their community. Now you have gazillion halfbaked PHP-frameworks, and a few actually good ones. You have Django (python), Zend, Symphony (PHP) and even in Ruby, some alternative frameworks. That has spread the attention. There used to be only One Good Framework (sic.) now there are many.

That said, Rails 3 has just been released. Rails 3 is cutting-edge again. It has all the ingredients for noSQL (the one-but-latest Hype) HTML5 (the latest Hype) and many javascript-frameworks and interactions (the next-to-be Hype).

That said, Rails is not just Hypes. It is actually a fantastic framework. With a still very active community around it. Just look at github, and visit the trending repo's there once in a while and you will see a Great Rails Thing there every week.

If you want to keep up to date, I would advice:

• http://www.rubyinside.com a blog all about Ruby.
• http://5by5.tv/rubyshow a podcast with (most of) all the news in Rails and Ruby land.

Answer 3

I wouldn't say "dying," but it's defintely lost much of its momentum:

Google Trends on "ruby on rails": .
For Comparison: Symfony, ASP.NET MVC, Django, CakePHP and Grails

Here are the reasons I believe caused this decline:

• Overhype: The framework was very much hyped. Any kind of hype eventually fades. RoR is not a be-all and end-all web development solution; nothing is (yet).

• Competition: There are now many quality frameworks for other, more popular languages. Some of them even were modeled after RoR (CakePHP, Grails, Django, etc).

  

• Ruby: Ruby is a very interesting language, but it has its idiosyncrasies. You can't program in RoR if you can't do Ruby, and proportionally few people know ruby compared to other languages.

Answer 4

In addition to the other answers, google is showing you sites with a lot of historically good content, but not necessary the most current.

For example, the Rails Envy guys have split into two good podcasts now: ruby5 at envylabs and the ruby show at envy labs (you'll have to google them, SO won't let me post the links.

The best rails guide resource is now the excellent http://guides.rubyonrails.org/

Read rubyflow and ruby inside for a week or two, and you'll soon come across all the best ruby and rails blogs.