It’s not the most flattering blog post:
http://noodlejunkie.com/articles/2006/12/10/ruby-is-rotting
The title is also misleading, as Ruby as a language is fine. Post on the
blog or reddit to clarify concerns and objections stated.
To be honest, I found the blog post pretty much right on. Ruby is a
great
language, the best language I’ve ever used, but it still has serious
issues
to be worked out, #1 being an official language spec and following that
having a proper VM to take care of speed issues. I have looked through
the
1.8.x interpreter code and frankly it’s stomach-churning, with most of
the
crap in the 3000+ line parser.y file, however the method of writing
extensions for Ruby 1.8.x is the cleanest and IMO the best designed API
ever. I’m not sure what’s going on with YARV, but I will say that I see
lots
of promise from Rubinius and JRuby promises to be the tipping point of
massive Ruby adoption across servers and desktops alike.
I’m not worried though, because of posts like this and work like
Rubinius.
People have realized an upcoming problem an are working to solve it
before
it becomes a nightmare.
And at the same time, none of this is really to be blamed on Matz or any
of
the core Ruby developers/maintainers. Ruby was Matz’s personal project
and
now that it’s become the language of choice for many, many programmers,
it’s
time to clean it up into a professional tool.
The future of Ruby is bright!
Jason
Hi –
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, Jason R. wrote:
I’m not worried though, because of posts like this and work like Rubinius.
People have realized an upcoming problem an are working to solve it before
it becomes a nightmare.And at the same time, none of this is really to be blamed on Matz or any of
the core Ruby developers/maintainers. Ruby was Matz’s personal project and
now that it’s become the language of choice for many, many programmers, it’s
time to clean it up into a professional tool.
Ruby is a professional tool, and has been for years. The 23
(twenty-three) in-print Ruby books that Maki brought to show us at
RubyConf 2002 in Seattle were, I think, not specifically written for
non-professionals. Also, while Ruby is a personal project of Matz,
that’s not to say that there haven’t been collaborators on the
language; and Matz has been, as far as I know, working on it full-time
for years. So “personal project” does not mean “spare-time project”
or “one-man project” (though that wouldn’t necessarily preclude any
level of accomplishment).
It’s important to examine all the issues surrounding the interpreter,
but we needn’t rewrite the history of the language. Whatever eval.c
and parse.y do or do not look like, Ruby has been used by professional
programmers for serious purposes for quite a while. And, I might add,
by non-professionals, and non-professionally by professionals, and
just about every other permutation. That’s always been one of the
coolest things about Ruby, to me.
The future of Ruby is bright!
So is its past – and present 
Happily, it’s not a zero-sum game:
JRuby and Rubinius and YARV can be great, and Ruby from 1993 to now
can also be great.
David
I guess I should have expounded on my use of the word “professional”.
Everything you say, Dave, is right, but we are forgetting the even
larger
community that decrys Ruby as too slow and a “hobbyist language,” that
is
“not fit for enterprise (shudder) use”. I myself have use Ruby in a
professional project, so I am not saying anything against that, but more
of
those people that I run into and deal with that just don’t understand
Ruby
because it’s too young and slow, usually comparing it to Perl.
Also, the issue that it’s something else that needs to be installed has
been
a hindrance to the adoption of the language in larger companies, while
Perl
and Java are automatically installed on any server. This is why JRuby is
such a great project (as most people have realized and hell is the basis
of
the project IIRC) and it will help put Ruby in a more “professional”
light
to the rest of IT.
I wasn’t trying to say that Ruby is not to be used professionally yet;
the
language has definitely proved itself many times in such environments.
However, to get more people (especially the Perl guys) to even try the
language, these improvements need to be made. Then there will only be
the “I
like Perl better” argument, for which we can reply “Your loss.”
Jason
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, Jason R. wrote:
I guess I should have expounded on my use of the word “professional”.
Everything you say, Dave, is right, but we are forgetting the even larger
community that decrys Ruby as too slow and a “hobbyist language,” that is
“not fit for enterprise (shudder) use”. I myself have use Ruby in a
professional project, so I am not saying anything against that, but more of
those people that I run into and deal with that just don’t understand Ruby
because it’s too young and slow, usually comparing it to Perl.
which is a major apples to oranges comparisson. if you write packages
in perl
- the object hack they did - then perl is more often slower than ruby
for
modular oo code. also, to be frank, this is like saying turtles are
faster
that slugs: they are both slow. so is java. so is c++. if you want
fast
write c, ocaml (or maybe fortran) period.
Also, the issue that it’s something else that needs to be installed has been
a hindrance to the adoption of the language in larger companies, while Perl
and Java are automatically installed on any server. This is why JRuby is
such a great project (as most people have realized and hell is the basis of
the project IIRC) and it will help put Ruby in a more “professional” light
to the rest of IT.
true. still, all the decent operating systems ship with it now.
I wasn’t trying to say that Ruby is not to be used professionally yet; the
language has definitely proved itself many times in such environments.
However, to get more people (especially the Perl guys) to even try the
language, these improvements need to be made. Then there will only be the “I
like Perl better” argument, for which we can reply “Your loss.”
i’m not sure that’s true. i’ve converted many perl coders here at noaa
- perl
programmers are often quite pragmatic and, in my experience, most will
prefer
either ruby or python (religious issue) if someone shows them even a
little
code.
-a
Hi –
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, Jason R. wrote:
I guess I should have expounded on my use of the word
“professional”. Everything you say, Dave, is right, but we are
forgetting the even larger
s/Dave/David/
community that decrys Ruby as too slow and a “hobbyist language,”
that is “not fit for enterprise (shudder) use”.
But what’s the opposite of forgetting them? Not, I think, having Ruby
dance to their tune. Ignoring them, perhaps?
Ruby, by the way, is a great hobbyist language. At least I found it
so, in the years I was using it before programming shifted from being
a hobby (admitted a rather consuming one) to being a professional
pursuit for me. But I know what you mean: people mean the term as an
insult.
I myself have use Ruby in a professional project, so I am not saying
anything against that, but more of those people that I run into and
deal with that just don’t understand Ruby because it’s too young and
slow, usually comparing it to Perl.
Well, it’s not Ruby’s fault – every language was 13 years old at some
point in its life
I have to say, I’ve seen a lot of discussion over the years about how
to get people to use Ruby; but I don’t know of a single case where
anything got anyone to try Ruby except Ruby. I don’t think anyone has
ever been convinced by a feature list, or benchmarks (well, definitely
not that or anything other than the language itself.
And usually by the time people are saying publicly that they don’t
like Ruby, they’ve seen at least as much of Ruby as I had when I
decided it was my dream language. So they probably really don’t like
Ruby.
Also, the issue that it’s something else that needs to be installed has been
a hindrance to the adoption of the language in larger companies, while Perl
and Java are automatically installed on any server. This is why JRuby is
such a great project (as most people have realized and hell is the basis of
the project IIRC) and it will help put Ruby in a more “professional” light
to the rest of IT.
I think this is changing, though the tendency to slice Ruby up into
packages is annoying since it makes installing it artificially
difficult and prolonged.
I wasn’t trying to say that Ruby is not to be used professionally yet; the
language has definitely proved itself many times in such environments.
However, to get more people (especially the Perl guys) to even try the
language, these improvements need to be made. Then there will only be the “I
like Perl better” argument, for which we can reply “Your loss.”
I think a better reply is: “So, how 'bout those Mets?” It’s
better to compare experiences than languages, I think. It’s like
musical instruments: mine doesn’t have to be better than yours to be
more suited to me.
David
- [email protected] ([email protected]) wrote:
Hi –
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, Jason R. wrote:
[snipped]
Ruby is a professional tool, and has been for years. The 23
(twenty-three) in-print Ruby books that Maki brought to show us at
RubyConf 2002 in Seattle were, I think, not specifically written for
non-professionals.
Pictures of the oft-fabled RubyConf 2002 pile o’ Japanese Ruby books
are available in glorious 2.1 megapixel technicolor at the following
URLs:
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0191.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0192.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0193.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0194.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0195.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0196.jpg
[snipped]
Hi David,
On 12/14/06, [email protected] [email protected] wrote:
So is its past – and present
Happily, it’s not a zero-sum game:
JRuby and Rubinius and YARV can be great, and Ruby from 1993 to now
can also be great.
I agree with you on this but I think there
has been a little confusion so I just finished writing
http://www.noodlejunkie.com/articles/2006/12/14/ruby-is-rotting-part-deux
Hopefully this clears things up.
Hi –
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, Paul D. wrote:
Pictures of the oft-fabled RubyConf 2002 pile o’ Japanese Ruby books
are available in glorious 2.1 megapixel technicolor at the following
URLs:http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0191.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0192.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0193.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0194.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0195.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0196.jpg
Thanks for posting those – always a pleasure to see them again
It was such a watershed moment, I think, for many of us. It brought
home the fact that we were Ruby newcomers, not early adopters. I
found it so exciting.
David
- [email protected] ([email protected]) wrote:
(twenty-three) in-print Ruby books that Maki brought to show us at
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0194.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0195.jpg
http://paulduncan.org/gallery/200211-rubyconf/?im=dscf0196.jpgThanks for posting those – always a pleasure to see them again
No problemo!
It was such a watershed moment, I think, for many of us. It brought
home the fact that we were Ruby newcomers, not early adopters. I
found it so exciting.
Yeah, we were pretty suprised. There’s even a picture (dscf0195.jpg, I
believe) of our amazedness, assuming that’s actually a word and that
it’s possible to capture that sort of thing.
It’s awfully difficult to be smug and clever when your standing in front
of a desk full of books about the “new” programming language you’ve just
discovered.
All those books and nary a MVC web framework in sight! Makes me wonder
what the next four years has in store for the Ruby community…