Here is a little piece written by Chris Shiflett in his Ruby on Rails Fans post:
“Ruby on Rails is a niche technology, and although all signs indicate that its popularity is growing rapidly, it’s a bit premature to be thinking that it will dethrone existing technologies.”
Alex Bunardzic writes in a recent post concerning this:
“The problem with the above statement is that it assumes that there are technologies which are not niche. But there really aren’t.
Even far-reaching technologies, such as web, are niche. Each technology has its niche, and there is no such thing as a general purpose technology.”
Alex, I have to disagree with you, somewhat. Your idea that every technology is a niche is somewhat flawed. Taking the word niche to it’s straightest definition:
Niche (noun): A niche is a special place within the scheme of things. It sometimes denotes the function or position of a thing within a structure.
Now, if you take niche to mean as defined above, then you are completely correct. If we were to use only that interpretation of niche, then there is nothing that is not filling a niche. The world and society are somewhat well-organized. Everything has a purpose to fill, or else it wouldn’t exist.
Common usage of the word niche, however, indicates something different. For something to be ‘niche’ within a group of other items or subjects typically indicates that it has a higher level of specialization than the norm. Taking this definition, calling Ruby on Rails a niche technology, is somewhat valid, especially if compared to COBOL, or C/C++, Java, etc. Ruby on Rails is meant to tackle a single, major problem - that of quickly constructing a viable web-based application, providing frameworks to assist along the way.
Therefore, I think it is fair to argue that Ruby on Rails is a niche technology.
In another point, Bunardzic writes:
“But if we look around, we’ll see that no technology ever goes away. Even though we live in the age of supersonic traveling, there is still plenty of trains, even horse carriages going around. These technologies will never go away.
Same is with high-tech. Mainframes running COBOL programs are here to stay. They will never get replaced by Ruby on Rails based software.”
I also disagree. how many 8-tracks do you still see, used seriously? Sure, vinyl is around, but what about the phonograph, or wax cylinders recordings?
Yes, COBOL systems are still used in some businesses, but they are on their way out. In 10 years, they will be gone. It is only a matter of time until the migration process is cheaper than the cost of maintaining inefficient legacy code. And every technology reaches that point at some time, even if it is 10 or 15 years overdue.
I am sure that there will always be hobbyists who will use these technologies. But they will be completely supplanted in common use. It cannot happen any other way.
I am open to a response, guys!
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