# When will the ruby 2.0 be released? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 16, 2008, 11:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/when-will-the-ruby-2-0-be-released/153396 "2008-11-16T11:00:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Rockydd)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2008, 11:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/when-will-the-ruby-2-0-be-released/153396/1 "2008-11-16T11:00:49Z")
guys, I didn’t find the schedule in the official site. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Rockydd)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 8:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/when-will-the-ruby-2-0-be-released/153396/2 "2008-11-17T20:08:12Z")
Rockydd wrote: > guys, I didn’t find the schedule in the official site. There is no schedule yet. Patience, my friend. Ruby 1.9 hasn’t even been released yet! If I had to guess, I would say: Ruby 1.9 is currently planned to be released at the end of January 2009. As soon as the general public gets their hands on Ruby 1.9, there’s likely to be a number of problems that need to be ironed out in subsequent minor releases, which is going to take something between a couple of months and a couple of years. After that, the next step is the ISO specification of Ruby. This is likely to take another couple of years. Only then is work on Ruby 2.0 going to _start_. Ruby 2.0 is a _very_ ambitious project, so it is probably going to take several years to complete. (Ruby 1.8 to Ruby 1.9 took 5.5 years, but Ruby 1.9 is not nearly as ambitious as Ruby 2.0.) So, my completely un-educated guess, pulled out of thin air, would be that Ruby 2.0 is going to be released sometime in this century, but not before 2013. jwm ---
**Author:** ![Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Rockydd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 9:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/when-will-the-ruby-2-0-be-released/153396/3 "2008-11-18T09:46:44Z")
> After that, the next step is the ISO specification of Ruby. This is > likely to take another couple of years. Are you implying that the ISO specification delays or halts Ruby development? I am probably understanding incorrectly, but just for a quick statement - I am using ruby since many years because I think it is a truly great programming language. I am not interested per se in grand ISO specifications or similar, I am more eager to see how the language evolves rather than how it gets taken into business rooms or to Spec teams. Ruby 2.0 not before 2013 sounds as if Ruby has completely grinded to a halt. I simply do not understand your reasoning and I regard it as wrong. (For the record though, in future retrospect … it will be interesting who of us was incorrect about the release dates 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Rockydd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 7:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/when-will-the-ruby-2-0-be-released/153396/4 "2008-11-18T19:57:55Z")
On Nov 16, 2008, at 4:56 AM, Rockydd wrote: > guys, I didn’t find the schedule in the official site. > > Thanks. Forgive me for saying this, but I think that version numbers are completely the _wrong_ way to think about programming languages! Sure, maybe at first, when a language is young and not capable of much, it makes sense to call it 0.8 or 1.0 or whatnot, but I think Ruby is past that point. I think this was apparent in Dave T. “Fork Ruby” talk. Ruby will advance through new implementations, new library methods, new variants, even if it doesn’t progress through new versions. The simplest way to think about it is to look at other languages. Languages like C, C++, SmallTalk, and Fortran don’t have versions, they have specifications. Those specifications, though, work like Ruby’s versions in some sense. That is, in one way, the Ruby version is the version for MRI, and in another way, the Ruby version describes a set of functionality that any other implementation must provide to call itself Ruby. So, think of the Major and Minor version numbers like a spec (1.6, 1.8, 1.9), and the revision and patchlevel numbers are more specific to MRI. Now, look at something like Fortran. I know lot’s of people who are still writing Fortran 77 code. That’s a language that was designed 31 years ago! Does that mean it’s a dead or static language? Not by a long shot. Companies like Intel, IBM, and the Portland Group are still improving on F77 compilers, adding in support for SIMD and the like. Look at C++. It’s working off a standard that’s 10 years old. Sure, there’s a new standard forthcoming, but much of what will appear in the new standard are things that people have already included in libraries like Boost, or in experimental branches of GCC and whatnot. Also, consider that when Ruby 2.0 comes out, it will probably require a lot of in-depth work by the alternative implementation authors. It’s probably best if that process takes a while. I’m thinking that the 2013-2015 time frame for Ruby 2.0 sounds just about right. My 2¢, anyway… Cheers, Josh ---
**Author:** ![Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Rockydd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/when-will-the-ruby-2-0-be-released/153396/5 "2008-11-18T14:41:04Z")
> Only then is work on Ruby 2.0 going to _start_. Ruby 2.0 is a _very_ > ambitious project, so it is probably going to take several years to > complete. (Ruby 1.8 to Ruby 1.9 took 5.5 years, but Ruby 1.9 is not > nearly as ambitious as Ruby 2.0.) What do you mean by “more ambitious”? Could you expand on that? In a way I am a bit afraid, 'cause if history is any indication, usually this “grandeous schemes” end up taking forever and eventually stall. Examples are Copland for the Apple, Vista for Microsoft (the original project), Perl 6, etc… Wouldn’t a more “evolutionary” approach suite best? Or is there some feature of Ruby 2.0 that requires a total revolution and can’t be done otherwise? What’s so wrong with Ruby 1.9? Thank you Diego ---
**Author:** ![Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@Rockydd](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Rockydd)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 7:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/when-will-the-ruby-2-0-be-released/153396/6 "2008-11-19T19:10:54Z")
On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:59:09 -0800, Rockydd wrote: > guys, I didn’t find the schedule in the official site. > > Thanks. The short answer is that we’ve long since abandoned the idea of considering 1.9 to be the unstable experimental branch that leads to version of 2.0. From what I’ve heard, Ruby 1.9 will be considered stable when 1.9.1 is released in January or so. –Ken