From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2007-11-11T20:47:33+09:00
Subject: Re: enterprise ruby

On 11/11/2007, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

> 1. As far as I know, *only* MRI is "100 percent MRI compatible". :) The

It's only like 99% compatible anyway, there are changes from time to time ;-)

> other implementations are "extended subsets". JRuby is for the moment
> the most complete subset and has more extensions, i.e., Java libraries,
> an AOT compiler and all of the performance tuning that the JRuby team
> has done. I haven't heard much from the Parrot/Cardinal project
> recently, but I'm guessing we'll see IronRuby at close to the level of
> JRuby by early next year, and Rubinius some time in the spring.
>
> 2. I don't think MRI is a dead end at all, considering the discussions
> I've seen on this list just since I got back from RubyConf. I see people
> seriously proposing re-doing the garbage collector, for example, and I
> see other people investing a lot of effort in tweaking Rails to use Ruby
> and the underlying OS more efficiently.
>
No, it's not dead end. However, I would expect its lifetime something
like 1-2 years. So small tweaks that bring immediate benefit are worth
it. Rewriting the GC probably not. Even if you manage to do it before
1.8 is obsolete it would get intensive use for a few moths at best.
If 2.0 succeeds (and I believe in it) there will be little incentive
to use 1.8 anymore. 2.0 will be the current actively developed
interpreter, and implementing the GC in there makes more sense.

Thanks

Michal