6 ms·

A Snowball's Chance In Hell : IronRuby

30 points by latch 16y ago

sordina 16y ago
I think this article is reading way too much into the issue. I'm guessing Microsoft canned IronRuby because there weren't enough people using it to justify the continued development required to keep up with the canonical version.
- cageface 16y ago
  Completely agree. I also completely disagree with the author that it's in Microsoft's best interests to handcuff its developers to its platform. That strategy might have made sense when Microsoft was still the 800lb gorilla lording over the entire market. Now that they have some real competition they're going to have to compete like everybody else: by making the best products they can that people use by choice. If anything they've clung to their old monopolies so long that they've seriously jeopardized their future.
  - marksmen 16y ago
    I feel C# is one of the best languages out there second only to python. Also Python works extremely well on windows and more than 99% of the packages support windows. dunno may be ruby programmers are apple fanboi's
- latch 16y ago
  It isn't like Microsoft made it particularly easy for developers to use IronRuby though. Look at these two popular Connect issues to have IronRuby and IronPython integrated with VS 2010: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/475830/ironpython-integration https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/... http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/479957/ironruby-integration-in-visual-studio-2010 http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/4... While its sad that it takes IDE integration, the truth is that it really does and that Microsoft knows it. So its hard to say it didn't have the enough people using it, when they never did the 1 thing they really had to do to give it a chance.
rbanffy 16y ago
Regardless of the importance of IronRuby for Microsoft (next to zero), the author is right in assuming Microsoft wants to make it easy to port your stuff to Windows, but devilishly hard to port anything Windows to anything else. Having languages that can be used on both sides of the fence breeds a generation of developers that can jump the fence anytime. This is death for them. They will never encourage it.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  But they can't be used on both sides - you port your ruby program to windows and then you start using .NET libraries (and there are a ton of them, many of which are good). Initially it might just be a couple to make a simple GUI, then you add more and more and in the end you have to rewrite the program if you want to get away from Microsoft. So I don't get their problem.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Their reasoning must be either that they find the native and cross-platform Ruby libraries to bee "good enough" or that rubyists that port their work to Windows do it in a way they keep the core cross-platform and the GUI thin and easily portable. It would be interesting to have a WinGlade/WPFGlade GUI library that used the GUI descriptors Glade generates to build native Windows interfaces on-the-fly. That would make life very easy for porters. It's so interesting I find it unlikely I am the first to have this idea. Got to google it. Would be even funnier to have a plugin for Visual Studio to "Save As Glade"...
Groxx 16y ago
>Ruby almost exclusively runs on Linux (for the server) and Mac (for the desktop) http://rubyinstaller.org/ http://rubyinstaller.org/ would care to disagree. It's just that it's included by default on many Unixes/BSDs (/GNUs/what-have-yous). Windows includes utterly squat for development of any kind on a fresh install; the exact same statement could have been made for any language. Literally. You can't compile C out of the box either, nor any .Net code. Does that mean nobody programs in C or .Net on Windows?
- sid0 16y ago
  Modern versions of Windows include C# and VB compilers.
  - borisk 16y ago
    No they don't. At least those versions which come from Microsoft and not from your favorite torrent tracker/IT department. All Windows relesead after 2003 contain the .NET framework Common Language Runtime, but compilers are part of the SDK.
    - aquark 16y ago
      Actually the compiler is part of the framework runtime. This XP netbook I'm typing it on has it installed and is able to compile a C# executable out of the box. Still, it is a fairly academic argument since notepad + command line is a pretty poor dev environment in any os.
      - borisk 16y ago
        Right, my bad.
      - contextfree 16y ago
        Windows 7 also includes Powershell, which is a pretty capable dynamic language in its own right.
- zrail 16y ago
Elepsis 16y ago
Where is this "Microsoft killed IronRuby" thing coming from? Sure, the lead developer quit, but that doesn't mean it's officially been shut down, all support removed, etc... not to mention that it's an open source project. Did I just miss something?
- tzs 16y ago
  It's open source, but without a fork it might not be feasible for outsiders to contribute. Some details here: http://evain.net/blog/articles/2010/08/07/on-ironruby http://evain.net/blog/articles/2010/08/07/on-ironruby
- petercooper 16y ago
  It didn't kill it. It did something worse. It withdrew enough resources and manpower from the project to effectively kill it without saying as much. Now it's obvious why IronRuby was relicensed under the Apache License just a few weeks back.. no-one would have bothered picking up the reins if they hadn't.
unexpected 16y ago
I agree with some points in this article, but there are dangerous points here as well. Its dubious to say that in the face of Windows and Office, Ruby is not worth investing in - in the face of windows and Office, NOTHING is worth investing in. This is a common business trap - why spend money on insignificant businesses when you already have giant product lines - that many companies fall into. Microsoft has already done it with Windows Mobile and IE, and is trying to avoid the same fate with its ZuneOS and Cloud Computing offerings.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Microsoft's situation is indeed a common business trap but it's more than a conceptual trap. It's a strategic trap. MS has reached a local maximum in it's profit potential. Any change in course would impact it's "golden reputation for solid profits". A company caught in a local maximum might really be unable to escape the situation, in that the purse holders are simply unwilling to open the purse for investments on a scale necessary to get into a different position. And they have a point. "You want to take these golden goose eggs and invest in diamond mining? No, we keep the goose eggs, that's what they are there for!" IE, companies don't exist a priori to grow and grow. A company exists to grow, become profitable and return the profits to the owners hot little hands. "in the face of windows and Office, NOTHING is worth investing in." - that might indeed be true. And it might the case that the only thing MS really is throw enough money at different project to keep from seeming like the abusive rent-extractor that its market position makes it.
  - berntb 16y ago
    Your description of those monopoly strategies reminds me of the resource curse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
borisk 16y ago
Such nonsense. Bill Gates' Microsoft would've put hundreds of developers on IronRuby and ensured it was the fastest and the most feature rich implementation there is. Just like they did with C++, Java and JavaScript. BTW Windows is completely useless for any serious Ruby development/hosting. There are a ton of bugs in networking, threading, GC.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  It took Microsoft a long time to get a C++ compiler out that was worthy of the name. Templates were so unusable that they were the laughingstock of comp.lang.c++ for much of the 90s. J++ was merely a trap for the unwary, lacking several important interoperability features (JNI and RMI come to mind) and promptly abandoned when a judge prevented them from poisoning the Java ecosystem. Think twice before you rely on them to faithfully implement a standard.
  - marksmen 16y ago
    err they created few best languages out there C# and F# and Python / Java run like kinfe through butter. Ruby Programmers are incompetent apple fanboi's.
  - earl 16y ago
    I seem to remember Visual Studio having a better C++ compiler than gcc for quite a while -- at least through the whole egcs fork. Some of the templating stuff didn't work in VS6, but I think that was pretty universally true for all compilers through 2003 or so. Or am I misremembering?
    - prodigal_erik 16y ago
      The way I remember it, Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 in 1998 was their first compiler that handled just about everything I could do with Borland C++ 3.0 back in 1991. Each of these was disappointing, but Microsoft's earlier releases were just about useless. I didn't do much with GCC until later.
greenlblue 16y ago
Wasn't this the same argument made when Apple acted like a douche and banned certain tools for iphone app development? It didn't make sense then and it doesn't make sense now. How is providing better tools for development on any platform dilute that platform? This is honestly a stupid argument and people should stop putting it forward.
malkarouri 16y ago
Any argument that builds on protecting the cash cows for Microsoft is not helpful, either to Microsoft or to the community. For big companies to survive long term, the main thing is to have the flexibility to do that. The most relevant example here is IBM, which almost didn't survive the 80s until they emphasized more system integration. As humanity progresses, demands will change. Microsoft has enough power, both in terms of number of employees and in cash, to pursue more than one option. Hence, many of the innovation coming from Microsoft Research can be very useful in the future. Moreover, one of the main advantages for Microsoft in the 80s and 90s was that they are friendly to developers. Of course there will eventually be a tie-in. You start using IronRuby, then you find ready .Net solutions to your programming, then you commit to using their database, and maybe visualisation via Excel, and you find yourself and your customers tied to the Windows/Office platform. Just like many companies are tied to IE6 despite what Microsoft wants and despite common sense. Give developers no incentives at all, and they wander around. At some point, the clear division in tools makes people either commit to Microsoft or to everything else, and when Windows come short (and it will, nothing is forever) people will move in droves. But give them a semblance of cross compatibility, and they will stick to Windows/Office while convincing themselves that there is always a way out. In reality, they will be locked by the economics of rewriting all the use of .Net technologies. Bad for the community, because splitting the community into Microsoft and others camps will lessen competition in both sides. Cross pollination will C# and Ruby will not exist when there is no shared community. And no improvements will be needed in either camp because of new features in the other.
marksmen 16y ago
huh! Ruby is a lame language, no one in corporate world wants it. They prefer python. Twitter had a bad experience with it. It just another crying session by ruby hippies. I cant wait for the day their language is dead. Python runs so nicely on windows that no one would even care if iron python was scrapped. It just shows that Ruby is being developed by unprofessional people who have no practical plan and cant even port their language to the most used platform in the world.
46and2 16y ago
Weren't you recently complaining about the MVP selection process? If non ms platforms are so superior, why do you spend so much time flaming MSFT? Seems like it's time to move on
- latch 16y ago
  Not exactly recently; and for the record, that post made the MVP program more transparent than its ever been (thanks to some detailed in-the-know commenters). The world you would live in is full of sycophants. The only people you'd have talk about XYZ would be people who love XYZ. You would dismiss anyone who thinks better alternatives exist. Q: "Hey, isn't this antenna problem awesome?" A: "It ROCKS!!!! Its like a super cool game!" Q: "Dude, don't you love how this page doesn't render well in IE?" A: "Oh Man, we get to play with HTML and CSS for the next hour!"

30 points by latch 16y ago

I think this article is reading way too much into the issue. I'm guessing Microsoft canned IronRuby because there weren't enough people using it to justify the continued development required to keep up with the canonical version.

cageface 16y ago
Completely agree. I also completely disagree with the author that it's in Microsoft's best interests to handcuff its developers to its platform. That strategy might have made sense when Microsoft was still the 800lb gorilla lording over the entire market. Now that they have some real competition they're going to have to compete like everybody else: by making the best products they can that people use by choice. If anything they've clung to their old monopolies so long that they've seriously jeopardized their future.
- marksmen 16y ago
  I feel C# is one of the best languages out there second only to python. Also Python works extremely well on windows and more than 99% of the packages support windows. dunno may be ruby programmers are apple fanboi's
latch 16y ago
It isn't like Microsoft made it particularly easy for developers to use IronRuby though. Look at these two popular Connect issues to have IronRuby and IronPython integrated with VS 2010: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/475830/ironpython-integration https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/... http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/479957/ironruby-integration-in-visual-studio-2010 http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/4... While its sad that it takes IDE integration, the truth is that it really does and that Microsoft knows it. So its hard to say it didn't have the enough people using it, when they never did the 1 thing they really had to do to give it a chance.

rbanffy 16y ago

Regardless of the importance of IronRuby for Microsoft (next to zero), the author is right in assuming Microsoft wants to make it easy to port your stuff to Windows, but devilishly hard to port anything Windows to anything else. Having languages that can be used on both sides of the fence breeds a generation of developers that can jump the fence anytime. This is death for them. They will never encourage it.

tomjen3 16y ago
But they can't be used on both sides - you port your ruby program to windows and then you start using .NET libraries (and there are a ton of them, many of which are good). Initially it might just be a couple to make a simple GUI, then you add more and more and in the end you have to rewrite the program if you want to get away from Microsoft. So I don't get their problem.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Their reasoning must be either that they find the native and cross-platform Ruby libraries to bee "good enough" or that rubyists that port their work to Windows do it in a way they keep the core cross-platform and the GUI thin and easily portable. It would be interesting to have a WinGlade/WPFGlade GUI library that used the GUI descriptors Glade generates to build native Windows interfaces on-the-fly. That would make life very easy for porters. It's so interesting I find it unlikely I am the first to have this idea. Got to google it. Would be even funnier to have a plugin for Visual Studio to "Save As Glade"...

Groxx 16y ago

>Ruby almost exclusively runs on Linux (for the server) and Mac (for the desktop) http://rubyinstaller.org/ http://rubyinstaller.org/ would care to disagree. It's just that it's included by default on many Unixes/BSDs (/GNUs/what-have-yous). Windows includes utterly squat for development of any kind on a fresh install; the exact same statement could have been made for any language. Literally. You can't compile C out of the box either, nor any .Net code. Does that mean nobody programs in C or .Net on Windows?

sid0 16y ago
Modern versions of Windows include C# and VB compilers.
- borisk 16y ago
  No they don't. At least those versions which come from Microsoft and not from your favorite torrent tracker/IT department. All Windows relesead after 2003 contain the .NET framework Common Language Runtime, but compilers are part of the SDK.
  - aquark 16y ago
    Actually the compiler is part of the framework runtime. This XP netbook I'm typing it on has it installed and is able to compile a C# executable out of the box. Still, it is a fairly academic argument since notepad + command line is a pretty poor dev environment in any os.
    - borisk 16y ago
      Right, my bad.
    - contextfree 16y ago
      Windows 7 also includes Powershell, which is a pretty capable dynamic language in its own right.
zrail 16y ago

Elepsis 16y ago

Where is this "Microsoft killed IronRuby" thing coming from? Sure, the lead developer quit, but that doesn't mean it's officially been shut down, all support removed, etc... not to mention that it's an open source project. Did I just miss something?

tzs 16y ago
It's open source, but without a fork it might not be feasible for outsiders to contribute. Some details here: http://evain.net/blog/articles/2010/08/07/on-ironruby http://evain.net/blog/articles/2010/08/07/on-ironruby
petercooper 16y ago
It didn't kill it. It did something worse. It withdrew enough resources and manpower from the project to effectively kill it without saying as much. Now it's obvious why IronRuby was relicensed under the Apache License just a few weeks back.. no-one would have bothered picking up the reins if they hadn't.

unexpected 16y ago

I agree with some points in this article, but there are dangerous points here as well. Its dubious to say that in the face of Windows and Office, Ruby is not worth investing in - in the face of windows and Office, NOTHING is worth investing in. This is a common business trap - why spend money on insignificant businesses when you already have giant product lines - that many companies fall into. Microsoft has already done it with Windows Mobile and IE, and is trying to avoid the same fate with its ZuneOS and Cloud Computing offerings.

joe_the_user 16y ago
Microsoft's situation is indeed a common business trap but it's more than a conceptual trap. It's a strategic trap. MS has reached a local maximum in it's profit potential. Any change in course would impact it's "golden reputation for solid profits". A company caught in a local maximum might really be unable to escape the situation, in that the purse holders are simply unwilling to open the purse for investments on a scale necessary to get into a different position. And they have a point. "You want to take these golden goose eggs and invest in diamond mining? No, we keep the goose eggs, that's what they are there for!" IE, companies don't exist a priori to grow and grow. A company exists to grow, become profitable and return the profits to the owners hot little hands. "in the face of windows and Office, NOTHING is worth investing in." - that might indeed be true. And it might the case that the only thing MS really is throw enough money at different project to keep from seeming like the abusive rent-extractor that its market position makes it.
- berntb 16y ago
  Your description of those monopoly strategies reminds me of the resource curse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

borisk 16y ago

Such nonsense. Bill Gates' Microsoft would've put hundreds of developers on IronRuby and ensured it was the fastest and the most feature rich implementation there is. Just like they did with C++, Java and JavaScript. BTW Windows is completely useless for any serious Ruby development/hosting. There are a ton of bugs in networking, threading, GC.

prodigal_erik 16y ago
It took Microsoft a long time to get a C++ compiler out that was worthy of the name. Templates were so unusable that they were the laughingstock of comp.lang.c++ for much of the 90s. J++ was merely a trap for the unwary, lacking several important interoperability features (JNI and RMI come to mind) and promptly abandoned when a judge prevented them from poisoning the Java ecosystem. Think twice before you rely on them to faithfully implement a standard.
- marksmen 16y ago
  err they created few best languages out there C# and F# and Python / Java run like kinfe through butter. Ruby Programmers are incompetent apple fanboi's.
- earl 16y ago
  I seem to remember Visual Studio having a better C++ compiler than gcc for quite a while -- at least through the whole egcs fork. Some of the templating stuff didn't work in VS6, but I think that was pretty universally true for all compilers through 2003 or so. Or am I misremembering?
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    The way I remember it, Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 in 1998 was their first compiler that handled just about everything I could do with Borland C++ 3.0 back in 1991. Each of these was disappointing, but Microsoft's earlier releases were just about useless. I didn't do much with GCC until later.

greenlblue 16y ago

Wasn't this the same argument made when Apple acted like a douche and banned certain tools for iphone app development? It didn't make sense then and it doesn't make sense now. How is providing better tools for development on any platform dilute that platform? This is honestly a stupid argument and people should stop putting it forward.

malkarouri 16y ago

Any argument that builds on protecting the cash cows for Microsoft is not helpful, either to Microsoft or to the community. For big companies to survive long term, the main thing is to have the flexibility to do that. The most relevant example here is IBM, which almost didn't survive the 80s until they emphasized more system integration. As humanity progresses, demands will change. Microsoft has enough power, both in terms of number of employees and in cash, to pursue more than one option. Hence, many of the innovation coming from Microsoft Research can be very useful in the future. Moreover, one of the main advantages for Microsoft in the 80s and 90s was that they are friendly to developers. Of course there will eventually be a tie-in. You start using IronRuby, then you find ready .Net solutions to your programming, then you commit to using their database, and maybe visualisation via Excel, and you find yourself and your customers tied to the Windows/Office platform. Just like many companies are tied to IE6 despite what Microsoft wants and despite common sense. Give developers no incentives at all, and they wander around. At some point, the clear division in tools makes people either commit to Microsoft or to everything else, and when Windows come short (and it will, nothing is forever) people will move in droves. But give them a semblance of cross compatibility, and they will stick to Windows/Office while convincing themselves that there is always a way out. In reality, they will be locked by the economics of rewriting all the use of .Net technologies. Bad for the community, because splitting the community into Microsoft and others camps will lessen competition in both sides. Cross pollination will C# and Ruby will not exist when there is no shared community. And no improvements will be needed in either camp because of new features in the other.

marksmen 16y ago

huh! Ruby is a lame language, no one in corporate world wants it. They prefer python. Twitter had a bad experience with it. It just another crying session by ruby hippies. I cant wait for the day their language is dead. Python runs so nicely on windows that no one would even care if iron python was scrapped. It just shows that Ruby is being developed by unprofessional people who have no practical plan and cant even port their language to the most used platform in the world.

46and2 16y ago

Weren't you recently complaining about the MVP selection process? If non ms platforms are so superior, why do you spend so much time flaming MSFT? Seems like it's time to move on

latch 16y ago
Not exactly recently; and for the record, that post made the MVP program more transparent than its ever been (thanks to some detailed in-the-know commenters). The world you would live in is full of sycophants. The only people you'd have talk about XYZ would be people who love XYZ. You would dismiss anyone who thinks better alternatives exist. Q: "Hey, isn't this antenna problem awesome?" A: "It ROCKS!!!! Its like a super cool game!" Q: "Dude, don't you love how this page doesn't render well in IE?" A: "Oh Man, we get to play with HTML and CSS for the next hour!"