Peter Fitzgibbons wrote:
>>PT> In article <20050818193338.C0A2533D5F / beryllium.ruby-lang.org>,
>>PT> Dion Almaer <dion / almaer.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>Who needs specs when you can just have exegenesis/apocalypse style 
>>>>fluffing around? :)
>>>>
>>>>A spec would be good from a "business" sense. I know of a few large 
>>>>companies that are worried about "betting on one Japanese fellow".
>>
>>
>>PT> I don't get it, what's the issue?  Ruby as it exists in it's
> 
> current 
> 
>>PT> form is usable - How would a language spec make them feel any 
>>PT> better?  I could
>>
>>I think a language needs a formal specification.
>>
>>If you have mission critical applications it's a little bit hard to
> 
> take this "C is the specification" argument.
> 
>>
>>I posted into the past that i really don't like it that matz break
> 
> compatibility in minor release changes. Suddenly returning a "[]"
> instead of "nil" might be a small change but it can cost millions of
> dollars if it happens in a critical environment.
> 
>>If we had a specification for this it might restrict matz to make
> 
> changes like this, just because it feels better. This works for a hacker
> language but i know that many companies got afraid when hearing about
> this.
> 
> 
> Hm... Unless there is a company that is running about 10,000,000 (yes 10
> million) lines of ruby, then I doubt that it could spend millions on a
> language change like returning [] instead of nil.  Um.. Unless they're
> updating language version majors without any testing.  BTW: Microsoft
> releases language version majors with every new Visual Studio.  Guess
> what?  They've "broken" code compatibility all over the place, up and
> down the library stack.  You can't even convert a project from one
> version of VS to another without major pain.
> 
> So, I don't think this makes Ruby a "hacker" language.  Any hacker can
> use ANSI C or C# or PHP or Python or Perl or Ruby and make a mockery of
> the language and version updates.  A professional programmer and
> 
>>>vendor<< will know that producing a valuable product for his/her
> 
> client requires responsibility, building stability into their product,
> and following a protective process in upgrading.
> 
> I have worked at many companies, each who have been spending anywhere
> from $100's to $100,000's on software development, and I'll tell you, to
> any one of them, updating a production system without testing more than
> once or on purpose would have been immediate dismissal, even from the
> most forgiving of them.  Backups are a rescue here, but that's no
> excuse.
> 
> So, all of you making money on Ruby and maybe Rails, you are NOT using a
> hacker language (BTW: at its inception, languages like C++ and VB were
> "hacker" languages).  I don't hear in the group any of you asking how to
> dance around the question of Ruby's respect in the development
> community.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Peter J. Fitzgibbons
> Applications Manager
> Lakewood Homes - "The American Dream Builder"(r)
> Peter.Fitzgibbons / Lakewoodhomes.net
> (847) 884-8800 
> 
> 
> 

Microsofts breaking of compatibilty is the reason I was looking for 
something like Ruby. Who wants to do 1.0 1.1 2.0(late and looking later) 
3.0 ... ad infinitum. The changes not only sucker punched many companies 
but also IDE makers like Macromedia who can't upgrade or improve until 
the final release of a change. PHPs popularity partially lies in the 
fact that improvements have committed the faux paus of not just breaking 
a script but stopping it cold with complete paradigm changes.

If Ruby turns into a monster like .NET is then those books I ordered 
from Amazon are worthless :(

-- 


Tesla - Alternating current, the first modern day opensource project?