From: MenTaLguY <mental@...>
Date: 2008-01-03T05:57:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Windows Ruby (was Re: Zed Shaw - Ruby has dodged a bullet)

On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 02:30:07 +0900, Sam Smoot <ssmoot@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

What makes it more saddening is that each person's contribution to
the community is multiplicative rather than linear:  we all learn from one
another.  I know I benefit a lot from the time I spend here.

Just for one small example, Zed was the guy who introduced me to
Ragel and sold me on the idea of copying the specification BNF directly into
a state machine generator for the sake of robustness, maintainability,
speed, and standards-compliance.  Those are lessons I've taken over to
other projects since, including lib2geom's svgd parser and (indirectly
via 2geom) Inkscape.

Still, leaving might have been the best thing for Zed; it's obvious
he was in a situation that wasn't very healthy for him, or arguably those
around him either.  Like Giles, I hope that any needed changes can get
made.

Here's looking forward to another year of Ruby.  I owe all of you more
than you know.

-mental