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Use the right tool for the job. I adore Ruby, but I don't think its very practical to shoehorn it into a role where it's a less optimal solution compared to the

Use the right tool for the job. I adore Ruby, but I don't think its very practical to shoehorn it into a role where it's a less optimal solution compared to the other available options. > Having to setup a whole new environment just to have their fav code tool at hand or having to boot a virtual machine each time just to use it it's much more inpractical VMs are part of the modern developer landscape and are actually quite trivial to setup. Further, once your VM is built, it requires no further effort beyond the couple clicks it takes to boot up the VM and shell (especially because most developers avoid reboots). > As you said the fact that you are advocating that people should not be able to use Ruby on Windows just feels a bit of a nix nerdy-bubble biased thought.* I think it's pretty obvious that I'm not advocating programmers shouldn't be able to use Ruby on Windows, they should use whatever they want, but I think they should also temper their expectations with the reality that Ruby on Windows is a pretty small niche, especially for web development (likely the most common use-case for Ruby).

MrBra 12y ago
Ruby is a general purpose programming language. The fact that Rails made it popular for web dev is another thing. Also anyone who uses a language should be not tied to what the majority of coders do with that language or to the conception of what a "modern coder" is. A language is a tool, and I am happy when it is easily available to anyone under any condition to make of it whatever they want.
- vectorpush 12y ago
  I'm not talking about what should be, I'm talking about what is. The reality is that Ruby on Windows is a relatively tiny fraction of the Ruby community; that doesn't mean nobody should use Ruby on Windows, it just means that you can't expect a first class experience compared to the environment where most Ruby code is tested, lives and thrives. This is the same reason why very few developers target .NET in the nix world, yes .NET can work on linux, but, despite the efforts of mono and Microsoft's upcoming OSS push, getting .NET to work correctly in a non-Windows environment is fraught with annoying problems and obscure compatibility edge-cases. Except for educational purposes, if you're a programmer, I just don't see a reason to fight one's tools by deploying them in an environment they just aren't optimized for in practice.

MrBra 12y ago

Ruby is a general purpose programming language. The fact that Rails made it popular for web dev is another thing. Also anyone who uses a language should be not tied to what the majority of coders do with that language or to the conception of what a "modern coder" is. A language is a tool, and I am happy when it is easily available to anyone under any condition to make of it whatever they want.

vectorpush 12y ago
I'm not talking about what should be, I'm talking about what is. The reality is that Ruby on Windows is a relatively tiny fraction of the Ruby community; that doesn't mean nobody should use Ruby on Windows, it just means that you can't expect a first class experience compared to the environment where most Ruby code is tested, lives and thrives. This is the same reason why very few developers target .NET in the nix world, yes .NET can work on linux, but, despite the efforts of mono and Microsoft's upcoming OSS push, getting .NET to work correctly in a non-Windows environment is fraught with annoying problems and obscure compatibility edge-cases. Except for educational purposes, if you're a programmer, I just don't see a reason to fight one's tools by deploying them in an environment they just aren't optimized for in practice.