Ruby Shines in Emerging Markets

A recent study from Evans Data indicates that more than twice as many developers in emerging IT markets such as China and India use the Ruby language as use it in North America or Western Europe.

According to the Evans Data Emerging Markets Development Survey, over one in five developers in the emerging markets of China, India and Latin America use Ruby for some of their development work, compared with only 10 percent in North America or Western Europe.

Evans Data officials said the study surveyed 400 developers and found that in the three emerging markets, as well as in Eastern Europe, developers showed a much stronger interest in the use of Ruby than in more well-established development regions. Developers in these areas also were more upbeat about the future of the language. Optimism about Ruby was particularly strong in India, though it was also strong in China and Latin America, Evans Data said.

"Overall, the use of scripting languages is much higher in the emerging markets versus other major markets we study," said John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data. "This is largely attributable to the fact that the developer population in the emerging markets is much younger and is more focused on Web development than other types."

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Other findings from the study include that 5 percent of the developers surveyed said they create software as a hobby, while another 10 percent write software for their jobs although they are not programmers. And more than 70 percent of developers in the regions surveyed have plans to develop or deploy SOA (service-oriented architecture), with 26 percent having at least some components deployed and the rest evaluating or in pilot stages, Evans Data said.

The survey also suggested that Intel's Core 2 processor is the most targeted processor in the world, including in the emerging markets, where half of the surveyed developers said they are now targeting it. This is particularly true in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where more than 60 percent said they were targeting the processor.