Where does Ruby go from here?

#1

Post by scottefein12 » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:03 PM UTC

Where does Ruby go from here?
blog.sefindustries.com

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#2

Post by danso » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:29 PM UTC

I would love Ruby to become the goto "glue" language between different platforms and applications. I confess to not being more than a layperson in Perl, even though Ruby is heavily inspired by it...could Ruby ever replace Perl as the "Swiss-army chainsaw of scripting"? Or are their technical hurdles (such as performance) that would keep Ruby from being that kind of status quo?

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#3

Post by eik3_de » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:29 PM UTC

> But we have technology needs that aren’t going to always be well served by Ruby

What are some examples?

I'll start with heavy number crunching (Go/C) and browser-based apps (JS)

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#4

Post by elliotec » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:35 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #2

I would love Ruby to become the goto "glue" language between different platforms and applications. I confess to not being more than a layperson in Perl, even though Ruby is heavily inspired by it...could Ruby ever replace Perl as the "Swiss-army chainsaw of scripting"? Or are their technical hurdles (such as performance) that would keep Ruby from being that kind of status quo?

Thats what I use it for.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#5

Post by tmorton » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:37 PM UTC

I think this is a great idea. The ruby community is a wonderful thing, and part of that is reflected in the technology.

However, the original Agile Manifesto was powerful because it made tradeoffs. "We value X over Y", even when Y is a valuable thing. For this HDD thing to take off, it has to make the similar tradeoffs explicit.

For example:

  We value readable code over runtime performance.
  We value open-source frameworks and libraries over developing for popular ecosystems.
  We value inclusiveness, diversity, and respect over pure meritocracy.
  We value teaching, learning, and improving our craft over short-term productivity.
  We value creating wealth over capturing wealth.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#6

Post by Igglyboo » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:39 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #2

I would love Ruby to become the goto "glue" language between different platforms and applications. I confess to not being more than a layperson in Perl, even though Ruby is heavily inspired by it...could Ruby ever replace Perl as the "Swiss-army chainsaw of scripting"? Or are their technical hurdles (such as performance) that would keep Ruby from being that kind of status quo?

Do you have any experience with Python? IMHO I think python fits that niche better than ruby or perl.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#7

Post by valarauca1 » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:39 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #2

I would love Ruby to become the goto "glue" language between different platforms and applications. I confess to not being more than a layperson in Perl, even though Ruby is heavily inspired by it...could Ruby ever replace Perl as the "Swiss-army chainsaw of scripting"? Or are their technical hurdles (such as performance) that would keep Ruby from being that kind of status quo?

Perl, Ruby, Python all have the necessary toolkit to fitful this roll. And all run within the same ballpark of speed. Honestly most of these scripting languages (or even perl in most of these cases) is doing the same thing a shell script can do.

Just Perl made string manipulation a lot easier then the standard shell. Also Perl got there first, which is slightly important.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#8

Post by kcorbitt » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:42 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #2

I would love Ruby to become the goto "glue" language between different platforms and applications. I confess to not being more than a layperson in Perl, even though Ruby is heavily inspired by it...could Ruby ever replace Perl as the "Swiss-army chainsaw of scripting"? Or are their technical hurdles (such as performance) that would keep Ruby from being that kind of status quo?

I think Ruby already serves this use case well. When I have to do file munging or sysadmin tasks that are a bit too complex for bash, Ruby always seems to have an elegant and readable way of getting done what I want to do. It's a combination of the syntax, standard library and ecosystem, and it does a great job.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#9

Post by gphil » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:45 PM UTC

eik3_de wrote: post #3

> But we have technology needs that aren’t going to always be well served by Ruby What are some examples? I'll start with heavy number crunching (Go/C) and browser-based apps (JS)

Concurrency (Clojure, Erlang)

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#10

Post by scottefein12 » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:46 PM UTC

tmorton wrote: post #5

I think this is a great idea. The ruby community is a wonderful thing, and part of that is reflected in the technology. However, the original Agile Manifesto was powerful because it made tradeoffs. "We value X over Y", even when Y is a valuable thing. For this HDD thing to take off, it has to make the similar tradeoffs explicit. For example: We value readable code over runtime performance. We value open-source framew…

I think that's a great idea-want to start us off with a pull request? :)