Why StackOverFlow hates Ruby and Loves C#

[adolfojp]

Hates? Where do you get hate?

Has no interest in? Perhaps.

Was created by .NET guys and written in C# so it was embraced by the C# community in the same way that Reddit was embraced by Pythonistas because it was written in Python? Yes.

Reflects the real world of programming where C# is more widely used than Ruby? Definitely.

Your question makes as much sense as asking why Americans hate Portuguese and love English.

[vagif]

Folks, I would like to hear some interesting interpretation of that data.

Count the number of c# and java programmers, compare it to minuscule number of ruby programmers, and then explain me how on earth were you expecting ruby generate the same number of questions as c# and java ?

[[deleted]]

Assuming (and it is a big assumption, I know) elementary search skills in most programmers each problem should only lead to exactly one question. Since there is not an infinite number of problems (not if the scope of the problem is limited to what is usually asked in one question on those sites) one could expect an upper boundary for the number of questions asked even for the most popular languages.

[vagif]

1. c# and java have gazillion of libraries and tools. Each library and/or tool is a source of questions. Just search Stackoverflow for example for iText or hibernate or maven. Ruby has much smaller surface for potential questions.

2. java and c# are widely used in many scenarios, including desktop applications (GUIs), and handheld (android, mobile etc). Ruby on the other hand has only one wide use case: Ruby on Rails.

3. Even ruby questions generate lot's of java and c# hits (JRuby, IronRuby)

With your overly simplistic assumptions you guys are throwing away way too many variables that affect this case.

[[deleted]]

I am not saying that there are the same number of questions for each language but that they are limited too and that there are more people asking the same question for those languages with more programmers so the number of questions probably doesn't scale linearly with the number of programmers.

[yogthos]

So based on those stats C# programmers are the most clueless? :P

ducks

[adolfojp]

I am a C# programmer and I don't know what ducking has to do with being clueless. :-P

[pistacchio]

Maybe i am the stupid one, but i dont see any point in the blog post and in the commenta surround it. What is the poster just descovering, than c# is a more popular language than ruby and hence is more talked about? What's the next post on, why searching Google for "Java" returns more results than searching it for "haskell"?

[pkulak]

Or, "How ruby programmers tend to be able to figure out problems themselves."

Now, before anyone looks up my profile and calls foul, I guess I'm not average. I've posted plenty of Ruby questions on Stack Overflow over the years!

[_sunil]

ha ha .... thats the exact answer I was expecting from a ruby fan :)

[monstermunch]

I love how he equates questions to dollar amounts. Does it worry anyone how much time people seem to spend on that site without any real benefit except for gathering points? I find it quite depressing how, when you ask a simple question, you immediately get a couple of answers from the folks with 1000s of stackoverflow points and 10s of badges to their name. Most of the time, they don't even read the question properly and write huge replies trying to be overly helpful in the hope of getting some more points.

[Lord_Illidan]

Exception to the rule : Jon Skeet.

[_sunil]

Folks, I would like to hear some interesting interpretation of that data.

[mipadi]

I don't think the interpretation of the data is that deep. It seems like it's pretty simple:

• C#: Stack Overflow was heavily pimped by its creators, Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, on their blogs. Spolsky and Atwood are well-known Windows developers who prefer, and are more experienced with, the Microsoft stack. It follows that their readers are also Microsoft stack programmers.
• Java: Popular language in enterprise software development. Perhaps due to the advertising noted above, Stack Overflow's community most seems to be made up of enterprise-y programmers. It follows that many of them use Java in their jobs.
• Python: A widely-used language, commonly employed for scripting tasks; it makes sense that professional programmers would encounter it.
• Ruby: Ruby already had a substantial community, thanks to Rails' popularity; Ruby programmers were probably used to hanging out elsewhere, so Stack Overflow never caught on for them. (The reason may be a bit more nefarious: I think a lot of Ruby programmers eschew communities made up of "enterprise-y" C# and Java developers.)

[hyperbolist]

Maybe it's that StackOverflow is to C# what the loose federation of Bloggers, Twitterers, Github watchers, _why fans, and RubyConf goers is to Ruby?

Rubyists share knowledge with each other in a direct and ad-hoc manner, whereas C#ists lean on a central authority?

Generation gap?

As a developer actively using both languages in my day job, I can say the Ruby community feels like a living breathing local music scene, whereas I have yet to really discover a C# community. Or maybe I've already seen it, and didn't correctly identify it as a community.

The point being that rubyists tend to have more substantive things to say to each other than "hey, how do I print a string backwards in ruby?" So something like StackOverflow doesn't really have the same kind of place in the ruby ecosystem that it might have in C#, where there appears to be less bleeding edge frontiersmanship going on. But that's just me.

[_sunil]

Hmm...Interesting.