From: Jeff Pritchard Date: 2006-06-09T05:15:04+09:00 Subject: Re: I love Ruby - But how bright is Ruby's Future? "I then jumped into Ruby(a whole lot of fun!) but I don't get the warm and fussies about Ruby's lasting power." Going back to the original poster's "problem", I think we have to ask him which kind of "lasting power" he is talking about. Will somebody still be using it twenty years from now, or will it become a hotbed of job opportunities in the near and longer term future? A tale of two languages... Forth and C both came onto the scene around the same time (more or less - work with me here). I don't think anyone would try to convince you that Forth is or has ever been a good way to make a living, but as a quirky, interesting, portable, dare I say it "fun" language, it has stood the test of time in the sense that almost any platform you can think of almost immediately upon creation has a forth interpreter and a small following. It clearly has "lasting power" of a sort. I think it would be easy to make the case for Ruby having this type of lasting power. It too is quirky and "fun". C, on the other hand, quickly and somewhat permanently became the defacto standard against which other newcomers have to battle for a place in the mainstream. Is it fun? Hardly. What is it about C that allowed it to gain such a foothold that it is still such a player twenty years later? Answer that, and apply those criteria to Ruby and perhaps you will have an answer to Ruby's potential for the "other kind" of lasting power. Does Java have that type of lasting power? I think not. I think it has a third kind of lasting power that is shorter lived. Inventor Dean Kamen recently spoke at our company. He likes to talk about how the bulk of "technology" is expended in an effort to "solve existing solutions". In other words, a course of action is chosen hastily, and then years and years of effort go into solving the shortcomings inherent in the path that was chosen. Dean likes to think of himself as a guy who comes in and points that out and gets people to consider a new solution to the original problem rather than "solving the solution". I believe that Java was marketed well and quickly adopted. In the ensuing several years, while it has become somewhat ubiquitous, most of the effort has gone into developing huge piles of technology to wrap it in that solve some of it's problems. Who knows, maybe Ruby will turn out to be a better solution to the original problem; while those who are experts at solving Java solutions will continue to be well employed for years to come just as COBOL programmers were (are?) - simply because it was so widely adopted by the business people it was marketed to. Another important question might be "Can I find enough work that it will be practical for me to enjoy making a living with a new and better solution rather than by solving the old solution"? I know which kind of development I would rather do. :) jp -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.