Joan Iglesias wrote:
> Hello
> 
> I'm studing Ruby and in a short Ruby in Rails for the web development. 
> I've observed that each verion of Ruby can introduce modifications in 
> the sintax and behaviour of Ruby. In the other hand I suppose the 
> comunity develop libraries in the stable release of the moment. The 
> question is:
> 
> What about backward compatibilty? If I write a Ruby program using 1.8.5, 
> in the future I'll be able to run in using the Ruby 2.0? What about the 
> libraries developed under 1.8 Ruby?
> 
> If I have to develop a professional Ruby program for a company, and one 
> day I have to update the Ruby's engine, or the ruby's version just 
> because of a security hole, it would be a bad surprise that nothing 
> works...
> 
> Someone can clarify all this questions please? I would like to program 
> in Ruby, but not at any price...
> 
> Thank you very much!

Generally, only major version increments introduce backwards 
incompatibilities. By major version I mean the x in x.y.z. Ruby 1.8 will 
probably be around even after 2.0 is released, and security and bug 
updates will surely continue for a while.


Cheers,
Daniel Schierbeck