6 ms·
Languages don't need more features as they grow older. While Ruby isn't perfect, it does have the right "core" set of features in my opinion. What we're seeing
by rubiquity 12y ago
Languages don't need more features as they grow older. While Ruby isn't perfect, it does have the right "core" set of features in my opinion. What we're seeing happening to Ruby right now is fantastic. The language is getting some speed and memory enhancements. The next big face lift I expect to see Ruby get will involve better abstractions for concurrency in MRI.
- riffraff 12y ago> Languages don't need more features as they grow older I am not sure that is true. Many of the "old" languages that are still successful seem to have changed over time, while most of those that have stayed mostly unchanged seem to have lost mindshare (even if they had most things to begin with). It is probably a marketing problem.
- rubiquity 12y agoOne of the features of Ruby is simplicity. In that case, more features will usually mean less simple. The feature of Java and C++ is features, so the way for them to stay relevant is more features.
- riffraff 12y agoI have used ruby for a long time so 99% of it makes sense to me, but it definitely is _not_ simple. Still, some increase in complexity may be acceptable: we have limited destructuring and case equality, pattern matching would be just a bit better. We have `Struct` which creates classes with positional arguments, but not a version that takes required parame even if it's a natural extension. We might have better composability for mixins etc.. And we can keep removing things (some more perlisms, for one).
- rubiquity 12y agoI agree about removing Perlisms. I love pattern matching and don't think it would be more complex. I just don't think adding pattern matching would be easy or performant given Ruby's syntax.