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I'm kind of disappointed in the way the author is approaching the launch of Rubinius X. The "death of Ruby" is being used as a rhetorical device. The strategy a

I'm kind of disappointed in the way the author is approaching the launch of Rubinius X. The "death of Ruby" is being used as a rhetorical device. The strategy appears to be that if we all believe that Ruby is actually dying, we're more likely to get behind Rubinius X. Unfortunately, no support is provided for this claim. Rubinius has always been the Ruby that placed purity before pragmatism. I applaud them for that, but putting forth the assertion that Ruby is dying as a means to drum up support for a new generation of Ruby seems like getting off on the wrong foot.

dragonwriter 13y ago
Ruby does seem to be, if not dying, at least losing a lot of the buzz it had a few years back, but mostly that seems to be because Rails has lost the buzz it had, and much of Ruby's buzz was actually not Ruby buzz, but Rails buzz. That being said, I think the vision Rubinius X has about where Ruby should go is great -- both in terms of language features and conventions -- and I think that besides the specific details, the high-level strategic vision is something Ruby needs.
- habitue 13y ago
  It is suspicious though that the Rubinius project just lost funding from Engine Yard, and now (like a week later?) the maintainer has declared Ruby dead and Rubinius X is the answer. It seems like death throes (of Rubinius) to me, rather than any substantial commentary on Ruby in general.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    A few points: 1. Dying != dead 2. In addition to being maintainer of Rubinius, Brian Shirai is the creator of RubySpec. To me, Rubinius X is more a forward-looking extension of RubySpec then it is something about building support for Rubinius-the-project. As RubySpec sought to create and concretize agreement on what Ruby is (which was important to making Ruby-the-language something more than MRI-the-implementation), Rubinius X is an (opinionated) effort to establish a consensus on where Ruby-the-language is going and how it is going to address the aspects of Ruby that are limiting its adoption. 3. I'm not at all surprised that the fact that Engine Yard, historically one of the biggest corporate players in the Ruby world and who until fairly recently was paying core developers for both JRuby and Rubinius is now not directly sponsoring either would be a source of soul searching and consideration of the future, both of the Rubinius and Ruby. I'd be rather more surprised if it wasn't.

dragonwriter 13y ago

Ruby does seem to be, if not dying, at least losing a lot of the buzz it had a few years back, but mostly that seems to be because Rails has lost the buzz it had, and much of Ruby's buzz was actually not Ruby buzz, but Rails buzz. That being said, I think the vision Rubinius X has about where Ruby should go is great -- both in terms of language features and conventions -- and I think that besides the specific details, the high-level strategic vision is something Ruby needs.

habitue 13y ago
It is suspicious though that the Rubinius project just lost funding from Engine Yard, and now (like a week later?) the maintainer has declared Ruby dead and Rubinius X is the answer. It seems like death throes (of Rubinius) to me, rather than any substantial commentary on Ruby in general.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  A few points: 1. Dying != dead 2. In addition to being maintainer of Rubinius, Brian Shirai is the creator of RubySpec. To me, Rubinius X is more a forward-looking extension of RubySpec then it is something about building support for Rubinius-the-project. As RubySpec sought to create and concretize agreement on what Ruby is (which was important to making Ruby-the-language something more than MRI-the-implementation), Rubinius X is an (opinionated) effort to establish a consensus on where Ruby-the-language is going and how it is going to address the aspects of Ruby that are limiting its adoption. 3. I'm not at all surprised that the fact that Engine Yard, historically one of the biggest corporate players in the Ruby world and who until fairly recently was paying core developers for both JRuby and Rubinius is now not directly sponsoring either would be a source of soul searching and consideration of the future, both of the Rubinius and Ruby. I'd be rather more surprised if it wasn't.