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Ruby 2.0.0 Released

ruby-lang.org

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Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#111

Post by vidarh »

noelwelsh wrote: post #83

I do wonder about the long term success of Ruby. Rails is easily the most visible project for Ruby. Rails is big, and all that code represents a high barrier to entry for any framework in a different language that wants to compete. However, a lot of people I talk to are moving to pure JS front-end + REST backend. In this world Rails doesn't deliver any particular value (in my opinion). Ruby also has utility for doing…

As a Ruby user that finds Rails annoying and not something I like working with, I don't think that's all that relevant. A lot of people have come to Ruby because of Rails, but a lot of Ruby people dislike Rails too. There's a plethora of web frameworks for Ruby that have sprung up exactly because of people who want to use Ruby but don't like Rails.

In terms for barrier to entry with Python, the issue is that a lot of us chose Ruby over Python already for very specific reasons. Pythons whitespace usage, for example, makes it DOA for me. I'm not touching it. If it works for you, great. It doesn't work for me.

Ruby is the project that provides enough value for me to maintain interest in Ruby, and that's what I see with lots of other Ruby users too: The language is sufficiently more fun to work with that we're willing to put up with quite a lot, including horrible performance, to work with it.

Ruby might become less relevant to others, but I don't care if that were to happen. It will only become less relevant to me the day a new language comes along that is even more pleasurable to program in. So far I've not seen anything get close.

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#112

Post by PommeDeTerre »

smnrchrds wrote: post #85
noelwelsh wrote: post #83

I do wonder about the long term success of Ruby. Rails is easily the most visible project for Ruby. Rails is big, and all that code represents a high barrier to entry for any framework in a different language that wants to compete. However, a lot of people I talk to are moving to pure JS front-end + REST backend. In this world Rails doesn't deliver any particular value (in my opinion). Ruby also has utility for doing…

> I just think it will slowly become less relevant. That's true for virtually anything. Do you think C/C++ or Java or JS will be mainstream 30 years from now. They will be in the same situation FORTRAN is today: important because of lots of legacy code, but not a viable choice when starting a new project. Of course some of them will never die. LISP comes to my mind. :-)

C and C++ will very likely still be "mainstream" 30 years from now.

Essentially every important piece of software today, from operating systems to programming language implementations to server software to applications, is written in one or both of them. All of these systems are not just going to go away.

C is over 40 years old, and C++ around 30, yet in that time nothing has come along that can compete with them. Some other languages have tried, but their success has only ever been partial, and typically in just one or two specific domains.

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#113

Post by vidarh »

tferris wrote: post #73
creamyhorror wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might as well ask why people still use Java. Because it works for their purposes, is popular (i.e. has market demand), and there aren't enough perceived incentives to move to a newer/better language yet. I'd very much like to learn the next great framework and its language - I just haven't been convinced by any of the front-runners quite yet (especially in terms of ecosystem resources). When that happens, you can…

> why people still use Java I am not into Java but I'd rather prefer using Java the next 10 years than Ruby 1 month. At least I get a perfect language implementation (the JVM) with Java.

> At least I get a perfect language implementation (the JVM) with Java.

I don't agree with you about the JVM, but you're clearly ignorant of Ruby if you're not aware that there's a Ruby implementation that runs on the JVM (JRuby).

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#115

Post by dasil003 »

noelwelsh wrote: post #83

I do wonder about the long term success of Ruby. Rails is easily the most visible project for Ruby. Rails is big, and all that code represents a high barrier to entry for any framework in a different language that wants to compete. However, a lot of people I talk to are moving to pure JS front-end + REST backend. In this world Rails doesn't deliver any particular value (in my opinion). Ruby also has utility for doing…

It's a weird jump of logic to say that because the biggest Ruby project (Rails) is overkill for a particular architectural flavor (JS + REST backend) that this will lead to Ruby's decline. Even assuming the market moves wholesale to pure REST backend (which is quite unlikely frankly, because not everything on the web is a CRUD-heavy app, documents still dominate), and Rails does not fit the bill (which is also arguable since moving to pure REST API only makes views/helpers irrelevant, which is at best 20% of Rails), then you would see other frameworks like Sinatra/Padrino rise to prominence.

The only way Ruby becomes irrelevant is if a new paradigm becomes dominant that just isn't easy to implement in Ruby. Threaded/evented/asynchronous frameworks do fit the bill, but my sense is that enough people prefer Ruby so much to a language like Javascript (in the case of Node), that if something like web sockets become indispensable as an 80% use-case, then the Ruby community will figure out how to make it easier to use them. I'm still using MRI which has some difficult problems to solve, but it seems JRuby is pretty much ready to pick up the slack if it really becomes necessary.

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#116

Post by grey-area »

There are some nice features here:

Keyword arguments, which give flexibility to API design

This looks good to replace all those options hashes in rails for example, though I wish they'd made it an all or nothing thing, apparently you can still do this:

    def foo(x, str: "foo", num: 424242)
i.e. use some named and some unnamed in the same method which looks ugly.

Module#prepend, which is a new way to extend a class

Compared to something like Go, I do worry the Ruby inheritance picture is becoming overly complex, but I guess there must have been some use case for this - anyone know where it is going to be used?

__dir__, which returns the dirname of the file currently being executed

This is a great little enhancement which means I can replace File.dirname(__FILE__) from the start of a lot of utility scripts. Would love to have seen more little improvements like this.

The UTF-8 default encoding, which make many magic comments omissible

At last! This should have been in 1.9.

Performance improvements

While these are incremental, it's nice to see more improvements - thanks Ruby team!

Onigmo, which is a new regexp engine (a fork of Oniguruma)

Not sure what this changes from Oniguruma.

Refinements

Refinements seems to be the headline feature for a lot of people, but I have two hesitations about it: it's encouraging a practice which has come to be seen as one of the most dangerous parts of Ruby - monkey patching, and the process of deciding its inclusion seems to have brought about a few schisms with the community developing alternative Ruby implementations because of performance implications, and raised wider issues about the Ruby design process:

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/1278-rubyconf2012-toward-a-d...

There is the argument of course that it's attempting to limit monkey patching and therefore limit the damage caused, but should it be encouraged at all? It'd be interesting to hear more on what happened here from anyone has been following this closely.

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#117

Post by vidarh »

aegiso wrote: post #38
tferris wrote: post #10

Today, I'll lose at least 50 karma points, but it's worth: Why people still use Ruby? 1. Because they get dream day rates for maintaining rusty slow legacy systems 2. Because they do not want to learn new languages and can stay in their comfort zone 3. Because they think it's still 2005 and nobody cares about slow server response times And now Ruby lovers, click on downvote or give your reasons why you still use Ruby…

Great points. Speed and newness are paramount! This is exactly why the most accomplished hackers write their web apps in SSE4.2 machine code.

You're not having your app baked into ASICs?

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#118

Post by dasil003 »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #31
reinhardt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "so far apart"?

I think they are very different too... I just can't explain how or where. Some people SWEAR by one of the two, and refuse to use the other. That's pretty harsh for languages that similar. There must be a reason... (The simplicity vs elegance argument makes sense) Edit: I think I mean the communities are far apart.

I'm a rubyist. I have nothing against python at all, but I have zero interest in learning it. Why? Simply because if I'm going to devote mental capacity to a new language I want it to be more different. Haskell is my current choice because as far as I can tell it is the opposite of Ruby in every way except the one that is my primary criteria for interest in a language: concision.

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#119

Post by acjohnson55 »

rschmitty wrote: post #101
noelwelsh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I only used examples with which I have personal experience. All new front-end projects we're doing are pure JS. I've used Jekyll in various commercial and non-commercial applications.

http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/05/improving-performance...

Great article! Are there any other good resources to read about how best to architect a modern rich web app?

Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released

#120

Post by PommeDeTerre »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #9

Anyone have any thoughts on why python and ruby are so similar, yet so far apart? They are obviously very close, because people switch between them all the time. And they are compared on everything (languages features, libraries, tooling...). I think it's a healthy competitive environment.

The biggest difference is the communities surrounding each, and the impression each leaves on people.

When I think of "Python", I think of a mature, helpful, experienced, talented, well-educated community. I can generally trust their advice, I can trust their code, and I can trust their technical decisions. It feels like collaboration is important and encouraged.

The Ruby community, whether this is deserved or not, leaves a very different impression. Anything good is quickly and heavily overshadowed by the unnecessary and petty drama, the egos, the fixation on worshiping certain figures in the community (DHH, Zed, why the lucky stiff), poor technical decisions, inexperience, repeated displays of very immature conference behavior, and so forth.

In can reflect very poorly upon a language when the community is generally toxic, like in the case of Ruby, or very positively when the community is generally superb, like in the case of Python. This is true even when the languages themselves are rather similar, from a technical perspective.

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