Mining for Ruby?
It has been more than one year when I declared that the time is ripe to mine for Ruby. But until now, I am still asking myself, if this is what a software should be then what's the Value Proposition? Ruby is great, I have a hard copy of Dr. Dobb's issue to prove that it's even older than Java. But again what is the Value Proposition?
I have used Ruby briefly, got some fun from it too. But let's not get carried away, fun is not part of the Value Proposition. Will I risk using it for a highly-critical application? Will other Ruby users be able to relate on my unique business or operational problems? I don't think so. Ruby is great, but to me it's no great deal. It's just another scripting language that happens to be object-oriented. Why other languages are popular and "acceptable" in the majority of the programming community? First, most of them are conceived in order to solve a problem(e.g. C/C++, LISP, Fortran), most of them have something in common in their history, they are designed initially for the purpose of building The One Great Product(e.g. SmallTalk, Java). Ruby was conceived from none of these reasons, it was made out of hobby, for the labor of love. My customers doesn't care about my labor of love.
I have used Ruby briefly, got some fun from it too. But let's not get carried away, fun is not part of the Value Proposition. Will I risk using it for a highly-critical application? Will other Ruby users be able to relate on my unique business or operational problems? I don't think so. Ruby is great, but to me it's no great deal. It's just another scripting language that happens to be object-oriented. Why other languages are popular and "acceptable" in the majority of the programming community? First, most of them are conceived in order to solve a problem(e.g. C/C++, LISP, Fortran), most of them have something in common in their history, they are designed initially for the purpose of building The One Great Product(e.g. SmallTalk, Java). Ruby was conceived from none of these reasons, it was made out of hobby, for the labor of love. My customers doesn't care about my labor of love.
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