RubyRx Impressions

Sometimes I wonder why I attend these Ruby conferences. I don't really program Ruby. I don't really do Rails. I think I do them to convince myself to do them, but honestly, I don't fit the profile of the typical Ruby programmer.

Which leads me to the profile of the typical Ruby programmer. Now RubyRx might not be the big Ruby conference, so its demographics may be somewhat skewed. However, I've been to RailsConf and RubyConf and it's similar to what I've observed there.

Ruby developers, in particular, those that attend conferences, are overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white. I counted maybe 3-4 women out of 50 or so people in attendance. Superficially, they all seemed white. I saw no other Asians including Indians. There were no African Americans either.

For the sake of Ruby and its future survival, it feels like this should be a worrisome point. There's a sense of "we're geeks, we like to code, we like to code with other geeks, and let's not worry about anyone else".

How many Rubyists even care about trying to get Ruby used in colleges and in high schools? They should because otherwise it's going to have a niche status. When the AP exam seriously considers switching to Ruby, that's when Ruby will have real success. However, most Ruby developers seem pretty content in their Ruby universe. They don't care if no one else gets it. That's their loss.

I wonder if there's a good explanation of why the demographics are what they are. I know I'm already an outlier. I'm like a guy who attends a meeting with poets but doesn't write poetry, so I don't help the demographics at all except in a weird sort of way (conferences don't require you to show your Ruby merit badge so you can show up, which I think is a good thing).