At the 2nd Ruby conference there was a general discussion (with all 100 or so attendees :) ) about Ruby's future and where it might find its killer app. I open

At the 2nd Ruby conference there was a general discussion (with all 100 or so attendees :) ) about Ruby's future and where it might find its killer app. I openly wondered if it would be Web development. Mind you, this was in 2002; while there were some good Ruby Web frameworks (I think Avi Bryant gave a talk on Seaside and using Ruby continuations in a Web framework) we had yet to see the likes of Nitro or Rails poke through to show how crazy easy Ruby could make it. The general response was, No, PHP and Perl have a lock on that, Ruby will need to find some other niche. Obviously PHP and Perl are still used for Web development, but you don't need to completely dominate an area to be effective. Just be good enough for enough people. As tech changes what makes something a good fit now may not apply later. Size and speed are important, but as things get faster and more hardware more robust you no longer be quite as fast or quite as small. Just fast enough and small enough and good enough.