David Vallner wrote: > M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > >> Well ... I know how *I* feel about it: >> >> http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/2006/11/nitty-gritty-of-ruby_11.html >> >> > > Impose JRuby on the world? I have my doubts Sun would even try - the > time of Java hype marketing is past. Well, the original poster wanted jRuby to be the one true way. I was simply saying that wasn't possible; even Sun couldn't do it. I too doubt if they would try. But Sun is a big enough company to try things that might not necessarily work. The time of Java hype marketing is past? Maybe, but the language seems to be an 800-pound gorilla in some peoples' minds. I can't imagine Sun *not* doing everything they can to insure that jRuby succeeds and wins business for Sun. > And I don't think JRuby will be as > earthshaking to both the Ruby and Java worlds as some people make it out > to be. By adopting JRuby as the implementation language for the Java > platform, you are also partially dropping the advantages that keeping to > Java has (existing infrastructure, experience, tool support). In the > end, it might be a useful tool on both sides, but I don't see paranoid > managers adopting Ruby en masse just because it has a J prepended to it > - not all of them are that gullible. > Again, *I* don't support dropping other implementations of Ruby. If nothing else, Microsoft will make at least one release of at least one Ruby implementation. And I'm sure Matz and Koichi will continue leading the community path. What I'm *not* sure about is whether Rubinius will flourish. Cardinal seems pretty much dead, but I think there's a lot of energy behind Rubinius. > That the JVM become the primary runtime for Ruby is somehow laughable. > So far, it hasn't become the primary runtime for any major programming > language that isn't Java, evidence would suggest that this remains the > case. It would be foolish for performance reasons if nothing else, a > dedicated optimised VM will do better when treated with Ruby > idiosyncratisms like pervasive use of closures. > But we're talking about two different things here -- a community and commercial enterprises. The community can afford to strive for perfection. Commercial enterprises can not. They must *satisfice*, not optimize! > The signal-to-noise ratio of blog topics that concern both Java and Ruby > has been abysmal unless it was about JRuby in specific, I hate to see > random opinionated rants and wishful thinking cloud that topic too. > Still, you have to acknowledge that jRuby is now a commercial project funded by a major hardware and software vendor. That's going to draw opinions and rants and wishful thinking and love and hate and arguments and FUD. I'm surprised someone from Microsoft hasn't attacked it publicly yet. jRuby is an investment. Only time will tell whether that investment will pay off and what the payoffs will be. I don't know enough about the Java runtime (or the CLR or Parrot, for that matter) to predict success or failure. I'm personally much more interested in the open source community efforts. There are many more opportunities for me to create signal there than there are in two corporations, neither of which pays me a dime. :) -- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P) http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/ If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.