Maybe. If Ruby / Ruby on Rails is a good language for web-development, easy for beginners to learn, the community is helpful, beginners feel welcome, and experienced developers invest in teaching; you'd expect to find a small army of 'just get it to work' developers knocking out small projects and charging too little.
I'm ok with that. Small projects get done. Not everyone needs a $125/hr consultant. Some of those projects will grow and need more experienced developers. All of those beginner developers will gain experience. Some of those beginner developers will continue to grow, learn testing, learn better software design principles and start contributing to the community.
If Ruby on Rails has, or were to have, a small army of beginner developers writing poor code on small projects and charging too little for it; I think it would be a healthy thing.
Disclosure: I got started as a Rails-first-language developer and have loved every second of it. And I try to get new people started with web-development using Rails and hope to see them get their first small projects that they can write bad code for and get paid anything for.
> If Ruby on Rails has, or were to have, a small army of beginner developers writing poor code on small projects and charging too little for it; I think it would be a healthy thing.
Hmm, well I see your point, but disagree. It's just like the WordPress situation for small businesses.
Someone comes in (usually a "designer") and cobbles some WP plugins and a template into a seemingly okay site for $500, but eventually the small business owner hits the limitations of that arrangement, and (from what I've observed) good programmers won't even take $5,000 to salvage a mess like that.
And not only does the customer end up feeling burned, it also leaves behind some toxic consequences, e.g., the customer has no idea what programming costs nor the difference between a prototype and production quality. So while we all start somewhere, this kind of low-rent ecosystem has certain enduring negative consequences (evident on Craigslist).
I'm ok with that. Small projects get done. Not everyone needs a $125/hr consultant. Some of those projects will grow and need more experienced developers. All of those beginner developers will gain experience. Some of those beginner developers will continue to grow, learn testing, learn better software design principles and start contributing to the community.
If Ruby on Rails has, or were to have, a small army of beginner developers writing poor code on small projects and charging too little for it; I think it would be a healthy thing.
Disclosure: I got started as a Rails-first-language developer and have loved every second of it. And I try to get new people started with web-development using Rails and hope to see them get their first small projects that they can write bad code for and get paid anything for.