From: Kev Jackson <kevin.jackson@...>
Date: 2006-03-22T16:15:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Rails vs. Ruby Evolution

Seth Rasmussen wrote:

>On 3/21/06, gwtmp01@mac.com <gwtmp01@mac.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>I was just reading through http://scottraymond.net/articles/
>>2006/02/28/rails-1.1, which gives an overview of the next Rails release.
>>
>>I noticed a number of extensions to the core ruby classes:
>>
>>        Object#to_json
>>        Enumerable#group_by
>>        Array#in_groups_of
>>        Hash#to_xml
>>        Array#to_xml
>>        Object#extended_by
>>
>>and so on.  Earlier versions of Rails also have lots of extensions to
>>the core libraries.
>>
>>Is anyone else concerned that the rapid evolution and adoption of
>>Rails is de facto
>>forking the core and standard libraries of Ruby?
>>    
>>
>
>I am not concerned. This is why the language is open.
>
>I am perplexed by the notion some seem to have that the open nature of
>Ruby is really just something like a trophy wife that you don't
>actually love, but love the idea of.
>
>  
>
On the other hand, if the rails team are finding it useful to have these 
extensions to the stdlib, maybe its worth having a discussion on wether 
or not some of these changes should be rolled into the standard?  Yes 
the core is open for all comers - which is great, but are the usecase 
for these changes sufficiently large enough to warrant consideration 
into the core of ruby, or will they always be just useful for web 
development and therefore should be contained within Rails?

Kev