From: Pixel Date: 2001-11-28T07:39:47+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:26704] Re: Vote in the current poll! Robert Feldt writes: [...] > > Personally, I'd be content with a faster interpreter (VM?). Compilers for > > a language like Ruby seem to be somewhat problematic because of the > > dynamic nature of the language - I'm not sure you would get as much of a > > speedup as is implied. > > > IMHO, you can get a considerable speed-up. AOS/SmallScript is a case in > point (but I'm in the beta program and not allowed to give any > figures). SmallScript really has a Microsoft'ish smell. Will you be allowed to write print "SmallScript really sucks" in SmallScript? (think FrontPage [1]) ;pp [...] > My view is that we can't expect people to develop commercial-grade > software tools on solely their spare time or by using time at other > jobs. - OCaml (commercial-grade) is supported by INRIA (french research lab). - gcc (commercial-grade) is supported by codesourcery, redhat/cygnus. The general of open source development funding problem applies to programming languages, with some differences. - Open source has many advantages, but doesn't generate as much income as the proprietary way. But when there are open source solutions, proprietary concurrence has hard times. Maybe one day we'll have the income-only-come-from-service as the only income solution and software won't generate as much money as today. Will it be better? I think so! - the particularities of programming languages are: - programming languages development has always been the work of fanatics, so is open source => it comes together quite well - the "market" of programming languages is developpers which - don't need as much fancy/polish as desktop newbie-type users. and fancy/polish is time development costly - can more easily help the language development - are well aware of open source => more easily appealed by it ! but this is my very personal way of seeing things. Seems like in fact people are much attracted by helping the kernel development :) [1] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/20/1443226 -- Pixel (from mandrakesoft) programming languages addict http://merd.net/pixel/language-study/