From: mortench <mortench@...>
Date: 2005-11-09T02:12:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Investigating Ruby - key limitations ?

Thanks for all the replies. Since I can't possibly reply to all, I will
just reply here.

1. Since early Java VM's also used a simple interpreter I think a
comparison is perfectly ok despite some reservations in some replies.
It is correct that algortihms may be more important than speed of VM
but that is not the issue here. I understand that Ruby may be fast
enough for a lot of things but in order to be able to use it for
all/most things the overhead need to go down. Java has developed a log
and I find that carefully(!) crafted java code can compare with C++ in
performance... Thanks for the tip about YARV, I will follow it (however
as I hinted in my blog, it may be a smarter decision of the Ruby
builders to base a new Ruby version on existing highly tuned VM's like
the Java Hotspot VM).

2. I am glad that multi-thread support is getting worked on. As I noted
in my blog there is of cause also JRuby which has multi-thread support
because it uses the Java VM.

3. I think lack of first-class unicode support for what ever the
reason, is a bad business-decision. Because of that a lot of people
like me (with limited Ruby experience) will forever wonder if they will
run into unforseen problems if they use Ruby.

4. I don't buy the argument often mentioned that some languages are so
compact/productive that they don't require IDE's. Better languges and
technolgies raises the bar so I am sure that compact/productive
languges like Ruby will just mean that the requirements are raised
accordingly. Whatever the langugage we will end up with really big
projects anyway. Even for small projects, IDE's with background
compilation, completion, refactoring, debuggin, profiling,
code-coverage, help ... is of great benefit. Iy may be right that
novice developers may be harmed by a IDE because a few uninformed ones
become clueless about the way things work, but this not a serious
issue. Emacs may be useful for hackers and occational programmers but I
can't understand why an EXPERIENCED developer/architect would want to
develop without an productiviy-amplifying IDE.

- Morten Christensen