From: Jason Roelofs <jameskilton@...>
Date: 2008-01-03T03:09:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Windows Ruby (was Re: Zed Shaw - Ruby has dodged a bullet)

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On Jan 2, 2008 12:30 PM, Sam Smoot <ssmoot@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 2, 10:05am, khai...@enigo.com wrote:
> > On Wed, 2 Jan 2008, Sam Smoot wrote:
> > > Anyways, back to Zed: Despite some people claiming "it's not that
> > > hard", people willing to write robust, stable, C extensions for Ruby
> > > are very few and far between it seems. Pure Rubyists are a dime a
> > > dozen in comparison. At least that's my perception of things.
> >
> > Extensions _aren't_ that hard. Not for the Ruby->C glue, anyway. Most of
> > the problems with extensions come from the same things that are always a
> > problem for C/C++ code -- memory management. The actual act of creating
> > an extension, though, isn't that hard. It's kind of fun, too.
> >
> > Kirk Haines
>
> Right, not really what I meant exactly. Probably should have kept my
> mouth shut, but I was thinking of a comment on RubyInside, where the
> poster said something to the effect of: "So he wrote a faster Webrick,
> big deal! It's a piece of cake!"
>
> It just seemed to me that some people are responding by belittling
> Zed's contribution of Mongrel. I can't think of another contribution
> to Rails' success since 1.0 that even comes close. It's not like
> people who are willing to write these sort of things, like Zed is/was
> with Mongrel, or yourself with Swiftiply and EventMachine, or
> MentalGuy with FastThread, or Wycats with DataObjects, or Evan with
> Rubinius exactly grow on trees. The people that are making these types
> of contributions, and more importantly delivering working, stable
> code, are relatively rare. When we lose one it's a shame.
>
>
For the record, it's Francis who does EventMachine, but your point is no
less valid.

I've read through a lot of Zed's blog now, and I do feel sorry for the guy,
being pidgeon-holed like that now. There's a lot of truth to what he says,
you just have to ignore the brashness that he uses in his delivery.

I hope he's able to get past this and continue doing great work, though from
the sounds of it he'll try to get back into management and only do coding as
a last resort. No, Ruby didn't dodge a bullet, Ruby lost a very capable
contributor.

Jason

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