Where does Ruby go from here? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#11

Post by JonnieCache » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:49 PM UTC

I don't want to leave ruby, but at the end of the day, it's slow. Jruby is pretty decent, but the clunkiness of the JVM takes the fun out of it.

Maybe it's just the lack of a corporation pouring billions into it like google did with V8, but I suspect that ruby can never be fast, due to ObjectSpace and the like. That awesome/insane object model we all like so much is just impossible to optimise. All the other weird shit ruby can do doesn't help.

http://blog.headius.com/2012/10/so-you-want-to-optimize-ruby...

Still, for stuff that doesn't need to be fast, ruby is still a joy to use, and always will be. The enumerable API feels so fluid, it's only really surpassed by languages like clojure in my experience.

As you might be able to guess, I'm looking forward very much to swift becoming a general purpose language. If apple are all funny about it and try and neuter the ecosystem for some reason, I will be a sad panda.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#12

Post by scottefein12 » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:49 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)

If you need a lightening fast API, anecdotal evidence suggests you just can't get it down to the speeds you see with Go. Rack/Ruby just isn't going to cut it.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#13

Post by ufmace » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:50 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'm already using Ruby for this. It's great for making little scripts and utilities to automate things and glue things together. Being able to interface with just about anything without much boilerplate while also having all of the tools of a high-end language make it really nice. Performance may not be as great - I don't know how it compares to Perl - but it's rarely an issue for these sorts of tasks. You could be 10x slower and still not notice the difference.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#14

Post by scottefein12 » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:50 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #11

I don't want to leave ruby, but at the end of the day, it's slow. Jruby is pretty decent, but the clunkiness of the JVM takes the fun out of it. Maybe it's just the lack of a corporation pouring billions into it like google did with V8, but I suspect that ruby can never be fast, due to ObjectSpace and the like. That awesome/insane object model we all like so much is just impossible to optimise. All the other weird sh…

Ruby is a lot faster than it use to be. But it's a matter of Ruby being complimented by other languages for their best attributes.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#15

Post by scottefein12 » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:51 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?

Chef. Tungsten Replicator-a powerful infrastructure orchestration tool-is all Ruby.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#16

Post by JonnieCache » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:53 PM UTC

scottefein12 wrote: post #14

JonnieCache wrote: post #11

I don't want to leave ruby, but at the end of the day, it's slow. Jruby is pretty decent, but the clunkiness of the JVM takes the fun out of it. Maybe it's just the lack of a corporation pouring billions into it like google did with V8, but I suspect that ruby can never be fast, due to ObjectSpace and the like. That awesome/insane object model we all like so much is just impossible to optimise. All the other weird sh…

Ruby is a lot faster than it use to be. But it's a matter of Ruby being complimented by other languages for their best attributes.

Oh it's definitely faster than it used to be. It used to be really slow. But object instantiation is ultimately still very expensive, and in a language whose design encourages the creation of huge numbers of objects, that's a problem.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#17

Post by humanrebar » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:55 PM UTC

Igglyboo wrote: post #6

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.

Ruby is generally more concise and easier to write though probably harder to maintain.

For example, when shelling out, ruby lets you do it many ways, including the familiar backtick syntax. In python, you shell out with popen -- you need to contruct argument lists, wire up stdout and stderr, etc.

Python's way might actually be better (more explicit, less ambiguity, easier to handle errors) but often you might just want something that's simple and readable.

For the record, there are nicer python APIs and safer ruby APIs. These are just general comments on the different ecosystems.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#18

Post by muchabi » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:55 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…

There's a strange, delightful joy in finding that I agree with every statement here and in the original post/repo

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#19

Post by veesahni » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:56 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?

Ruby replaced Perl as my swiss-army chainsaw a long time ago.

Re: Where does Ruby go from here?

#20

Post by jtbigwoo » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 3:58 PM UTC

If you're writing a manifesto, you should be able to test future decisions by running them past the criteria in the manifesto. The first four statements are great in that regard, but the next six are a little fuzzy.

It might help if the manifesto is clearer on what you don't value. Mission and vision statements are often meaningless because you can stretch a positive statement to include almost anything. The Agile Manifesto is great because it uses contrast to clarify what it values most.

In some of the statements, the contrast seems to be implicit and that's fine. ("I value an environment conducive to all levels of experience." I assume that means we don't want an environment for only beginners or only experts.)

Other statements, though, are harder to figure out. ("I value software development as a craft." Does HDD cater to "craftsmen" as opposed to hobbyists? Or is this in opposition to "professionals"? Or are we talking about relationships and apprenticeship?)

I think this concept has a ton of potential. Can't wait to see where it goes next.

EDIT: It appears tmorton was thinking the same things and used far fewer words to say it.