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The fact that RVM "does more" means that users need to understand more in order to fix problems that it causes. If you install RVM and other things on your syst

The fact that RVM "does more" means that users need to understand more in order to fix problems that it causes. If you install RVM and other things on your system break due to its tampering with .bashrc, you need to understand what it has done. If I didn't understand $PATHs, etc., I would still be unable to use "man" due to $MANPATH being broken from the last time I installed RVM.

FooBarWidget 13y ago
Correct, but it also means that the authors take responsibility for fixing those problems. That's the attitude we have for Phusion Passenger: it does a lot of stuff for you so that you don't have to. And if things break because of our fault, we take the responsibility of fixing it so you don't have to and can concentrate on your own business. Have the RVM authors not fixed the problems you experienced?
- bobbyi_settv 13y ago
  I don't use RVM anymore and don't know whether this specific bug was fixed. The point of my example wasn't "RVM sucks because I once encountered a bug". The point was that RVM's model of tampering with the user's environment in a global way is problematic because when bugs inevitably arise, as they do in all software, they break unrelated software in ways that an inexperienced user wouldn't be able to tie to RVM. This is what I think your Python example below misses. If Python is slow because it doesn't have a JIT and that causes someone's program to run too slowly, they can see that the problem is that Python is slow. Python's lack of a JIT would never cause "man traceroute" to stop working in a shell session where the user hasn't done anything related to Python and couldn't possibly guess that Python is the culprit.
- brandonbloom 13y ago
  > we take the responsibility of fixing it so you don't have to Surely you must say no to some people... I can't take the risk that person might be me and then be left up the creek without a paddle. Do you have an SLA? What if I have an issue in production and the core contributors are all sleeping? Can I wake you up? Can I pay you for the right to wake you up? Even if you are awake and willing to help on my schedule, can you do so reliably without breaking everybody else? As your complexity (and popularity!) grows, your ability to take responsibility shrinks. EDIT: A quick Googling suggests that you do offer commercial support. Take my comments above more generally for the wider array of open source projects out there that real businesses depend on.
  - FooBarWidget 13y ago
    It is exactly as you say. It is a double edged sword, with both benefits and drawbacks. RVM is one example. Another example is Python. Why does Python still have a global interpreter lock after all these years, and why does it not have a JIT? One of the reasons is because it makes development easy, keeps the architecture simple and makes contributions easy. Writing a language implementation without a GIL, and with the latest state-of-the-art garbage collector and JIT, makes the code and architecture more complex also. The drawback of this is... that Python has a GIL and has no JIT.
    - brandonbloom 13y ago
      Huh? I don't understand the relationship between this and what we're talking about at all. There are so many distinct issues to sort out here, it's almost not even worth trying. rvm is complex both in implementation and in interface. The interface complexity comes from the shear number of things it tries to do automatically for you: interpreter versioning, gemsets, shell integration, plugins/extensions, devops functionality, and a bunch more! All of that is tangled together in one tool and you can't get any piece of it a la carte. Each of those things has its own plumbing commands and conceptual surface area. rbenv just fucking puts some shit on your path. That's totally separate from an interpreter having inherent complexity in sophistication of algorithms and data structures. Personally, I think (as do the PyPy folks) that Python's design has some substantial complexities that make JIT-ing much more difficult than Lua, for example. If you choose a simpler language, you can get a simpler JIT; hence LuaJIT's success. Similarly, if you choose an even simpler language, with less mutability in core data structures, you can get a simple lock-free, multi-threaded interpreter.

FooBarWidget 13y ago

Correct, but it also means that the authors take responsibility for fixing those problems. That's the attitude we have for Phusion Passenger: it does a lot of stuff for you so that you don't have to. And if things break because of our fault, we take the responsibility of fixing it so you don't have to and can concentrate on your own business. Have the RVM authors not fixed the problems you experienced?

bobbyi_settv 13y ago
I don't use RVM anymore and don't know whether this specific bug was fixed. The point of my example wasn't "RVM sucks because I once encountered a bug". The point was that RVM's model of tampering with the user's environment in a global way is problematic because when bugs inevitably arise, as they do in all software, they break unrelated software in ways that an inexperienced user wouldn't be able to tie to RVM. This is what I think your Python example below misses. If Python is slow because it doesn't have a JIT and that causes someone's program to run too slowly, they can see that the problem is that Python is slow. Python's lack of a JIT would never cause "man traceroute" to stop working in a shell session where the user hasn't done anything related to Python and couldn't possibly guess that Python is the culprit.
brandonbloom 13y ago
> we take the responsibility of fixing it so you don't have to Surely you must say no to some people... I can't take the risk that person might be me and then be left up the creek without a paddle. Do you have an SLA? What if I have an issue in production and the core contributors are all sleeping? Can I wake you up? Can I pay you for the right to wake you up? Even if you are awake and willing to help on my schedule, can you do so reliably without breaking everybody else? As your complexity (and popularity!) grows, your ability to take responsibility shrinks. EDIT: A quick Googling suggests that you do offer commercial support. Take my comments above more generally for the wider array of open source projects out there that real businesses depend on.
- FooBarWidget 13y ago
  It is exactly as you say. It is a double edged sword, with both benefits and drawbacks. RVM is one example. Another example is Python. Why does Python still have a global interpreter lock after all these years, and why does it not have a JIT? One of the reasons is because it makes development easy, keeps the architecture simple and makes contributions easy. Writing a language implementation without a GIL, and with the latest state-of-the-art garbage collector and JIT, makes the code and architecture more complex also. The drawback of this is... that Python has a GIL and has no JIT.
  - brandonbloom 13y ago
    Huh? I don't understand the relationship between this and what we're talking about at all. There are so many distinct issues to sort out here, it's almost not even worth trying. rvm is complex both in implementation and in interface. The interface complexity comes from the shear number of things it tries to do automatically for you: interpreter versioning, gemsets, shell integration, plugins/extensions, devops functionality, and a bunch more! All of that is tangled together in one tool and you can't get any piece of it a la carte. Each of those things has its own plumbing commands and conceptual surface area. rbenv just fucking puts some shit on your path. That's totally separate from an interpreter having inherent complexity in sophistication of algorithms and data structures. Personally, I think (as do the PyPy folks) that Python's design has some substantial complexities that make JIT-ing much more difficult than Lua, for example. If you choose a simpler language, you can get a simpler JIT; hence LuaJIT's success. Similarly, if you choose an even simpler language, with less mutability in core data structures, you can get a simple lock-free, multi-threaded interpreter.