Comments on: What’s Ruby’s future? http://rc3.org/2008/12/13/whats-rubys-future/ Rafe Colburn on software development (and other topics) Mon, 21 May 2012 23:52:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Fred Blasdel http://rc3.org/2008/12/13/whats-rubys-future/comment-page-1/#comment-3428 Fred Blasdel Sun, 14 Dec 2008 06:02:23 +0000 http://rc3.org/?p=8777#comment-3428 <p>You've touched on something I've been thinking about a lot lately — that almost all languages are totally ossified before they are ten years old.</p> <p>I've been thinking about it because I realized that Haskell is 21 years old and never stopped growing and changing. Every few years someone discovers something surprising and novel, even Monads weren't present at the beginning. I can't really think of any other 'living' languages — even Smalltalk has frozen/forked periodically, despite Alan Kay's intentions.</p> You’ve touched on something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — that almost all languages are totally ossified before they are ten years old.

I’ve been thinking about it because I realized that Haskell is 21 years old and never stopped growing and changing. Every few years someone discovers something surprising and novel, even Monads weren’t present at the beginning. I can’t really think of any other ‘living’ languages — even Smalltalk has frozen/forked periodically, despite Alan Kay’s intentions.

]]> By: Dan http://rc3.org/2008/12/13/whats-rubys-future/comment-page-1/#comment-3424 Dan Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:55:31 +0000 http://rc3.org/?p=8777#comment-3424 <p>I think Ruby as a language is still alive and well, the problems most people are complaining about are the implementations, specifically C Ruby (MRI). You rarely see people complaining about the Ruby language itself.</p> <p>I know many people who don't even consider MRI a front-runner anymore, preferring to do their development with JRuby. I think that attitude will become even more common over the next year or two as people become aware of the limitations in MRI.</p> <p>While I think the recent rash of articles like KirinDave's come off as a bit whiny, it's still a good idea to examine the state of the Ruby implementations regularly and ensure we don't become complacent.</p> I think Ruby as a language is still alive and well, the problems most people are complaining about are the implementations, specifically C Ruby (MRI). You rarely see people complaining about the Ruby language itself.

I know many people who don’t even consider MRI a front-runner anymore, preferring to do their development with JRuby. I think that attitude will become even more common over the next year or two as people become aware of the limitations in MRI.

While I think the recent rash of articles like KirinDave’s come off as a bit whiny, it’s still a good idea to examine the state of the Ruby implementations regularly and ensure we don’t become complacent.

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