tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post8442900577419001024..comments2024-03-11T10:18:55.852-05:00Comments on Headius: JRuby's Importance to Ruby, and eRubyCon 2009Charles Oliver Nutterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06400331959739924670noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-86527822200478211582010-11-18T06:23:18.570-06:002010-11-18T06:23:18.570-06:00Impressive article but my view are these. If Rubyi...Impressive article but my view are these. If Rubyists do not see JRuby as important, they will do little to help JRuby succeed against its JVM rivals. If its JVM rivals become the only viable JVM-based solutions for agile development, Java platform developers will choose them over Ruby and Rails, increasing the size of their communities and making them more viable. If the entirety of the Java community end up using languages and frameworks other than Ruby and Rails, it will be extremely damaging for Ruby/Rails relevance in the future. And that means fewer jobs, fewer Ruby/Rails-friendly organizations, and fewer opportunities to grow Ruby.web design hampshirehttp://www.123internetmarketing.co.uk/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-73635000324026442382010-06-28T10:33:36.513-05:002010-06-28T10:33:36.513-05:00The fact of the matter, IMHO, is that Ruby isn'...The fact of the matter, IMHO, is that Ruby isn't really such a great language. I don't know about Groovy but maybe Scala and Clojure are just better.<br /><br />The two points i'd like to raise are:<br /><br />1. Typical OO is bullcrap. This is where Clojure is better. It does away with the false assumption that the "class" with "methods" is the right thing to model your problem domain.<br /><br />2. Static typing is a benefit. Especially under the time constraints of a commercial project, you will never write all the unit tests you would need to catch every type mismatch. This is where Scala is better.<br /><br />And the list goes on. Don't get me started on first class functions.pescohttp://www.khjk.org/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-39508426114037918222009-10-22T17:17:23.490-05:002009-10-22T17:17:23.490-05:00I agree that being closer to Java is good for adop...I agree that being closer to Java is good for adoption in companies. <br /><br />The main reason I've stayed away from jruby in the past is it has been so slow. Since that appears to not be as much of a problem I might end up participating more :)<br />-rRoger Packhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01578246846716577925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-53127773268327330772009-09-25T02:54:58.385-05:002009-09-25T02:54:58.385-05:00I don't anything about ruby language but i am ...I don't anything about ruby language but i am a Java professional and as a number of users increase in my Java programers community Java become a most popular language for development.dvd rhttp://www.zoombits.co.uk/computer-accessories/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-11113894079350228952009-09-24T05:04:43.440-05:002009-09-24T05:04:43.440-05:00Hi,
It is great to use Ruby language.The eRubyco...Hi,<br /> It is great to use Ruby language.The eRubycon is great to see new updates on the Ruby conference and language development.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.zoombits.de/kabel/" rel="nofollow">audiokabel</a>Martina Tycovahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16107576464662683019noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-92169879723447826402009-08-24T14:04:32.640-05:002009-08-24T14:04:32.640-05:00Charles,
Thanks for all your efforts for [J]Ruby ...Charles,<br /><br />Thanks for all your efforts for [J]Ruby and the community. I agree with ilan b that Scala is gaining mojo w.r.t. Java developers, but one aspect that has not been mentioned is that two of the four JavaPosse members (Carl Quinn and Dick Wall) seem to be enthusiastic Scala supporters, and their podcast has much influence on the development community. While Tor Norby's work on the IDE plug-in for Netbeans really helped Ruby developers, there seems to be a strong influence towards Scala and other JVM languages. Charles is right- It's the enterprise, stupid!Ben Leadholmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10982404227069883372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-19899904506036184912009-08-23T09:44:39.459-05:002009-08-23T09:44:39.459-05:00I agree with the original post. I am actually more...I agree with the original post. I am actually more pessimistic than Charles, when assessing the viability of Ruby/JRuby in the long run. <br /><br />I understand Charles has a vested interest as he is spending so much of his life building JRuby. For me, it's different, I don't have that same problem. I just analyse with an open mind.<br /><br />For ruby to grow and become a major force, it has to be accepted by enterprise(whatever their size). This is what drives java technology and .net <br /><br /><br />see my comments at https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20975090&postID=8442900577419001024<br /><br />my entry is almost at the bottom : chris at 6/27/2009 1:18 PM<br /><br />Like I said, we'll do a check in 5 or 10 years from now and we'll see who was right in their analysis.<br /><br />cheers<br />ChrisAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-50343653801030923492009-08-13T06:04:42.338-05:002009-08-13T06:04:42.338-05:00Before my comment, a little bit of context: I'...Before my comment, a little bit of context: I'm working for a big Telco operator (you get the picture : “big”). In this company, you have to follow the IT rules to do something (software installation, language to use, etc…).<br />For mainstream development, we merely use Java with Eclipse IDE tools (for the big picture) and we all have in our PCs (Windows desktop/laptop), the Java VM installed. For a long time, it was JRE 1.4, but now 1.5. And quite soon after 1.5, we had 1.6 installed.<br />As we go "Web 2.0" (well, you know…), we use Flex/Flash Builder for Website UI design.<br /><br />So in big companies, you have to follow the rules (whatever you think of the rules – good or bad- : language choice, version control, development methods, etc...).<br />If you want to use something different, you have to pass along many committees with a lengthy process to get an approval witch ends in large part with quite a No.<br />If I want to use “c-Ruby/MRI” on my laptop, I should have “Admin rights” to install it or I need approval from the IT department.<br />Remark: well, I have Admin rights so I can do much more than the average employee (and I dot it because it’s tolerated. But it can be removed any time and without notice).<br /><br />Why is it this way? Well because in big companies, IT departments are accountable for the consistency of all legacy applications. And every migration to new version of any software (basic example: Windows XP to a new version ;-) ) should be as smooth as possible for the Enterprise application ecosystem.<br />So IT Departments don’t try every new “something” every month (and there’s a lot of new “something” in the market).<br />And this is why you still find large COBOL, FORTRAN, Ada codebases in some industries.<br />And their point of view makes sense.<br /><br />So in most cases, from an Enterprise point of view, creating a new “branch” of “coding environment/ecosystem” will simply fail (or might fail).<br /><br />But this is where the idea of having some or many Ruby VM implementations is interesting.<br />With JRuby, having ruby code transformed on a Jar or a java codebase and then deploy it on a JavaEE server can bring the possibility for Ruby to enter more easily in the Enterprise game.<br /><br />So this is why Jruby, IronRuby are good for the Ruby ecosystem.<br /><br />Loic.<br /><br /><br />(*) : By the way, I liked your comments on the Lightning talks at Rails Underground London July. I agree with you :<br />Conferences should not be just about Rails. Ruby can do much more.<br />When I go to Rails conferences, I always think “can I do desktop applications or something else with Ruby ?”.<br />But, to be honest, due to its success, Rails is a good marketing flag for Ruby.AquaGraphicshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14698456407736911450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-6643149004837579142009-08-09T16:13:23.596-05:002009-08-09T16:13:23.596-05:00Excellent post. I would go as far as to say that ...Excellent post. I would go as far as to say that if JRuby or something similar does not offer the seamless extension of the Java platform as Groovy/Grails does then Ruby/Ruby on Rails faces an uphill climb in Corporate America.<br />Additionally, it must offer qualitatively superior solutions in Java/J2EE world than Groovy/Grails does today.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07621717749982594158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-57327838834984790772009-08-03T02:11:54.779-05:002009-08-03T02:11:54.779-05:00Personally, I don,'t use JRuby as I'm not ...Personally, I don,'t use JRuby as I'm not in an "enterprise-ish" environment, however, I do greatly appreciate the importance of it. I can agree that JRuby is very important to Ruby as a whole. It could really pull in a lot of people from the Java platform. On the other hand, I think it's important to warm the people who use MRI more to JRuby. <br /><br />So, I think work on JRuby needs to proceed on both "ends" of the spectrum. On the one side, JRuby should integrate as tightly as possible with the Java platform. On the other side, JRuby should be as compatible as possible with MRI, especially with 1.9.x. (1.9.2 isn't a big change from 1.9.1, just some enhancements and new functionality). <br /><br />I think the imporant thing to keep in mind for people who program in MRI, is that should try to keep the Ruby libraries we write compatible with JRuby as well.Beorannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-61466347931294978192009-07-31T02:14:50.277-05:002009-07-31T02:14:50.277-05:00> Regardless of how fast or how solid the C or ...> Regardless of how fast or how solid the C or C++ based Ruby implementations get, <br />> the vast majority of large organizations are *never* going to run them. <br />> That's the truth.<br /><br />I mostly program in Java. However, I don't think JVM is the end all, be all. Maybe you meant that large organizations trust more well-enstablished platforms backed by (other) well-enstablished organizations? I don't think that is true. Take for example Apache and PHP. Both are implemented on C and hugely successful.<br /><br />Besided that, not being dependant on JVM also means that you don't have to pay for all the weight you don't need. This also means more freedom to move where you want to go instead of being draged by the underlying platform.Dimitrisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-26623054331525361542009-07-30T09:43:50.301-05:002009-07-30T09:43:50.301-05:00Jruby is damn good. I said this because of Jruby s...Jruby is damn good. I said this because of Jruby support in windows. I am working on windows environment and Jruby working like charm in windows. I even ran a Jruby on Rails application(redmine) in windows with tomcat, this is hard to do with cruby which can't easily run a rails on windows.Shin Gueyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16586524654434194035noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-67108572749284213512009-07-29T15:54:08.223-05:002009-07-29T15:54:08.223-05:00@Sean
Brilliantly put, I too really enjoy the met...@Sean<br /><br />Brilliantly put, I too really enjoy the meta programming goodness of Ruby but then again, it has lead to the Monkey Patching madness that we sometimes deal with (especially if dealing with ActionPack within Rails)<br /><br />The more I think of it however, the more I agree with you. Thank you for reminding me!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16587105599135674032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-13533464555199168572009-07-29T15:17:54.983-05:002009-07-29T15:17:54.983-05:00ilan b,
I too think Scala in many ways incorporat...ilan b,<br /><br />I too think Scala in many ways incorporates things I like about ruby. One big thing it doesn't have, however, is the level of programmatic symbol manipulation most dynamic languages including Ruby offer. In Ruby, for instance, I can define easily define methods, constants, and classes programmatically, and I can't do that in Scala. Scala's behavior of generating accessor functions for every instance member, for instance, constrasts with Ruby's attr_accessor function. While attr_accessor itself is neat, what is neater is that I as a user could easily write a function that does the exact same thing as attr_accessor. I could not, however, easily extend Scala to imitate it's facility for attribute method generation.<br /><br />While Scala is a great statically typed language, I don't think it can replace Ruby simply because it doesn't have compile-time equivalents for all of the features you get with Ruby at run-time. I think Ruby faces bigger threats from the other dynamic JVM languages like Clojure and Groovy.Sean Requehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14885985269638328601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-91719518046798680882009-07-29T07:37:35.120-05:002009-07-29T07:37:35.120-05:00"taking the fight to them"
"Know yo..."taking the fight to them"<br />"Know your enemy"<br />You make this sound like a war.<br />Aren't you the guy who only recently was telling us how having numerous JVM languages was a good thing, and that there was room for everybody?<br />Or does that only go while you thought you were on top?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-4522018976088186462009-07-28T13:08:47.744-05:002009-07-28T13:08:47.744-05:00Charles,
Great post and I like the others really...Charles, <br /><br />Great post and I like the others really appreciate your efforts in JRuby. (I still remember fondly the announcement on ruby-forum when you were acquired by Sun)<br /><br />One thing that is important to consider is that many of the new languages are taking SMP head on and have built in constructs for dealing with concurrency such as Scala and Clozure. Scala in addition to being OO also incorporates many functional constructs, this in itself is very attractive to developers.. <br /><br />Another is that Scala borrowed heavily from Ruby and can even be considered an evolution of Ruby in some regards. Almost everything in Ruby is in Scala and in some respects I would argue that it even has a purer OO implementation due to it treating functions as first class objects. <br /><br />Just like Ruby was a great conglomeration of Perl, Smalltalk, etc.. Scala can be viewed in much the same way.. <br /><br />Maybe if you can't beat them, you should join them. :)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16587105599135674032noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-53891030867671609852009-07-28T08:52:34.309-05:002009-07-28T08:52:34.309-05:00Hi Charles!
This post got me thinking. I'm 10...Hi Charles!<br /><br />This post got me thinking. I'm 100% with you on the importance of JRuby to the Ruby community. And also its importance to the so-called "enterprise" world. It's our best bet.<br /><br />But still, I'd like to know the motivation of java developers around the world on the JVM languages debate, so I've set up a quick poll here: http://bit.ly/VA1w3<br /><br />I'd appreciate if you guys code visit and share the link. I'll publish the results on twitter at the end of the week. My twitter is: @leonardo_borges<br /><br />TKsLeonardo Borgeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13160263743001841663noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-36825899045229003122009-07-28T00:31:38.248-05:002009-07-28T00:31:38.248-05:00Jruby has quickly become my preferred platform, an...Jruby has quickly become my preferred platform, and it's great to hear the plans for the next release. My biggest hurdle in spreading ruby into the java groups at my company is the need to use jruby classes in java. We have a highly customized solr deployment and I could easily write components in jruby if they could be compiled into java classes. I'm hoping flood gates open once that hurdle is out of the way.<br /><br />shameless plug: I've tried to help spread the jruby love with <a href="http://github.com/automatthew/moonstone/tree/master" rel="nofollow">moonstone</a> which is a jruby wrapper around lucene. Unfortunately it's hard to get a lot of rubyists to understand the possibilities of leveraging the java platform in this way. Who needs acts_as_solr when you can use lucene directly in your ruby app!!!jaydonnellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13279254863158598601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-37510874423818504752009-07-27T22:18:07.457-05:002009-07-27T22:18:07.457-05:00Groovy and Grails has hit the tipping point.
I th...Groovy and Grails has hit the tipping point.<br /><br />I think your post is dead on.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-85181379841134074002009-07-27T21:29:24.544-05:002009-07-27T21:29:24.544-05:00i have to add couple more point, gwt, google app e...i have to add couple more point, gwt, google app engine are very awesome/potential tools/technologies,<br />one stuff about gwt is, it is incredibly verbose(becos of java)<br />i was looking if scala could generate the java source files, but that is not the case, if jruby or it mutants(duby,juby) can generate GWT java classes, it will be really fantastic,<br />i think, this (google)is one more thing distracting people from ruby/jruby. so if jruby can provide<br />tools on this stuff, it will gain <br />adoption<br /><br />- Nokogiri seems to be an awesome library, but i cant make it run on windows with jruby1.3, if iam doing pet project,<br />most of the home machines are windows and not macs/ubuntus(serious hackers stuff)<br /><br />- i mostly care about good ruby libararies always being integrated and upto date with jruby( ex nokogiri).<br /><br />- i agree waiting for rails 3/ ruby 1.9 and lots of gems breaking <br />made me spend time on gwt/gaej/scala<br /><br />- i agree that enterprise jruby with java libraries will also contribute to a good success ( GRAILS guy was really smart in this case atleast).<br /><br />-All said and done, i still am counting to JRuby to deliver...<br />by focussing one any/all the directions listed above<br /><br />-rubeeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-85294809844554523402009-07-27T19:05:56.728-05:002009-07-27T19:05:56.728-05:00Mr. Interweb: those charts only included point-of-...Mr. Interweb: those charts only included point-of-sale sales, which according to Oreilly's next post, only accounted for 32% of their sales (and they say the Prags as well). As a result, I consider their results statistically useless. I'd be interested in the prags year-to-year change on Ruby books.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16613294016855448316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-76565832993161651942009-07-27T18:45:36.244-05:002009-07-27T18:45:36.244-05:00One thing that shook me up a little was the recent...One thing that shook me up a little was the recent statistics of ruby book sales.<br /><br />http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/state-of-the-computer-book-mar-25.html<br /><br />Take a look at the graph comparing books sold by language. Ruby had the biggest percentage loss of sales. This could be because people are waiting for Rails 3 or Ruby 2 to come out before buying a new book, but it does show that there are not as many newcomers to the language buying up books.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13425717543224975747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-67933424408087352622009-07-27T17:00:31.155-05:002009-07-27T17:00:31.155-05:00JRuby is very good and Rubyists should give it a t...JRuby is very good and Rubyists should give it a try more often. JRuby buys you a lot of stability and those simple Ruby libraries and scripts of yours start getting uptimes spanning several months quite easily.<br /><br />So it's time for phase two of the famous triple E. Embrace was first. Now it's Extend showtime. ;-)<br /><br />I get what the "bitter pill" was all about now. It has to do with making more use of Java from JRuby. Though I would question trying to entice people to be early adopters of even newer technologies before JRuby gets even more stable. With every new version of JRuby, users have learned to expect major improvements and fixes. So while it could be said to be fairly stable, there might be ways to making it work more seamlessly and so on when it comes to making it beat CRuby more thoroughly.<br /><br />For a contrarian point of view, some people could expect to see JRuby appealing for more stability and conformance with CRuby before trying to fight on new fronts. For example, come December, and Ruby 1.9.2, how will JRuby cope with it?<br /><br />Nonetheless, adding some Javaisms to JRuby cannot hurt it too much either and might even be a plus when comparing it to other language implementations. Although this too should be more of a long term war than just a short term battle.Joaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12145009136037700490noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-47384257939754354252009-07-27T16:04:49.541-05:002009-07-27T16:04:49.541-05:00hi
thank you for your great work on jruby, i am a...hi<br /><br />thank you for your great work on jruby, i am a java dev, was looking to lighten my java bloat with languages like ruby/jruby, i really like ruby, before trying ruby i played with groovy/grails, but found out web related tasks, ruby has still the edge, then came across scala, i really like scala,so scala stole my time from ruby, but still i believe that if you are doing web related stuff, ruby is very productive, except for the "CONSTANT CHANGES" to the library, gems break all the time..., i really feel if people maintain a "gem repository" for jruby focus little bit on the window world, things would be far better, i still am hanging on to jruby, i really want it to stablize ...,all my old gems/effor has become invalid with new releases,things keep on changing,so the effort put is all gone in few weeks/months, again i have start it all over, pls maintain gem repository for that release...<br /><br />iagree that scala,etc have made a<br />dent..., looks like ruby community is blinded<br /><br />thank you once again for all the hard work by the jruby team<br />-rubeeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20975090.post-4392150480016240472009-07-27T15:30:45.433-05:002009-07-27T15:30:45.433-05:00Michael: Yeah, I'm excited to hear about your ...Michael: Yeah, I'm excited to hear about your work and others' work to put a Ruby face on all those Java libraries. I think Hibernate is a perfect example of what could be accomplished. It's well-known to be the most feature-complete and extensive ORM package for pretty much any language. It's also very complicated and has an enormous API. It's a perfect candidate for "Rubification", and indeed Grails' "GORM" wrapper around Hibernate and JPA is probably the #1 reason people choose Grails over alternatives. Think about how ActiveRecord drew so many people to Rails. Now imaginehow far we could get if we had ActiveRecord with Hibernate's featureset. It boggles the mind.<br /><br />Thanks for all your work!Charles Oliver Nutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06400331959739924670noreply@blogger.com