Re: Collaborative Ruby Language Specification

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:
>> Ruby developers will have to decide if inability to run on JVM or 
>> CLR-based Ruby implementations is worth all the continuation-based 
>> "funky stuff". Honestly, I don't think it is.
> By "Ruby developers", do you mean anyone who develops in Ruby? The 
> reason I ask is that not everyone who develops in Ruby will have a hard 
> requirement to run on the JVM or CLR, and I also doubt very seriously if 
> they'll have a hard requirement to use continuations either. 
> Requirements are *what* must be done -- using a JVM or CLR platform or 
> using continuations are *hows*, not whats.
> 
> The question is then, "if there is to be one Ruby 1.8.x, and JVM and CLR 
> Ruby 1.8.x don't have continuations, but stock Ruby in C and Rubinius 
> Ruby 1.8.x *do* have continuations, do we take continuations out of the 
> ones that do have it?"

I would never suggest such a thing. There are already features in C Ruby 
that we'll never be able to support, and features in JRuby that C Ruby 
won't support for some time (pure native threading, native unicode, 
highly advanced garbage collection). People will weigh the pros and cons 
of the various implementations and make their decisions. If they 
absolutely must have continuations or fork, they probably won't be able 
to use JRuby. If they absolutely must have state-of-the-art garbage 
collection or native threads, they probably won't be able to use Ruby 1.8.

- Charlie