From: "Torsten Rüger" <torsten@...>
Date: 2012-12-24T03:20:40+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:51097] A Homage to Ruby

Moi,

I have been wanting to let some thanks go for a while now, so here it is.

Matz: I would like to thank you personally for the endurance in creating and maintaining ruby. It was love at first sight for me, and I have been using it with joy and continuing learning since 2001. It was a great relief after all those years of java and c++. I have just finished coding a c extension and was thus reminded just how much more productive I am in ruby.
There is a secondary reason for my gratefulness. In 95, after reading the blue book and being full of inspiration, I started implementing a smalltalk vm and failed, due to lack of experience. So I now read the ruby source with a lot of respect.
I would be happy to accommodate you and family in our B&B (http://villataika.fi/en/index.html) if you ever you venture into the far north of Europe, Finland.

The form of my thanks has come as 4 inspirational articles. Don't ask me why, they just sort of came (ie wasn't planned), but I post them here in the hope to inspire:

I finally managed to put something into words that had been bugging me for years, namely the role of basic types. If objects were atoms, integers are electrons.
http://leonardo-syndrom.blogspot.fi/2012/12/integers-are-not-objects.html

That followed into strings, and why current modelling of them is wrong:
http://leonardo-syndrom.blogspot.fi/2012/12/constant-strings-and-hash-conundrum.html

Through my extension I had determined that ruby speed was a major issue, so here are some points on what could be done about that and other things:
http://leonardo-syndrom.blogspot.fi/2012/12/towards-ruby-3.html

And finally the great pie in the sky:
http://leonardo-syndrom.blogspot.fi/2012/12/towards-ruby-4-and-5.html

I hope there is something in there for somebody. If not, then not, my apologies.
Also i might add that these conclusions represent a sort of closure for me personally, not a beginning.

Hopefully everyone in the northern hemisphere had a nice winter-solstice.
Happy longer days ahead.

Torsten