From: khaines@...
Date: 2008-01-03T03:31:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Windows Ruby (was Re: Zed Shaw - Ruby has dodged a bullet)

On Thu, 3 Jan 2008, Sam Smoot wrote:

>
> 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.

Gotcha.  I took it as a technical comment, not a social one.  I agree 
about the social comment.  I think a big reason for that, and that I think 
is one of the points of Zed's rant, is that things like that take a hell 
of a lot of time, and can still be very hard to convert into something 
that actually pays the mortgage & feeds the kids.

I don't think the Ruby world is different than others in that respect, but 
I do think that the practical demand to do something with one's time that 
earns one a living, as you well know, applies a lot of backpressure on the 
drive to innovate and to try new things.


Kirk Haines