From: Song Ma <songmash@...>
Date: 2008-04-09T12:28:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby’s not ready - an indepth essay

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>
> 2. My main concern is not with the documentation. My main concern is that
> both the syntax and semantics of the language seem to be more fluid than
> "pragmatic" considerations would dictate. I more or less grew up with
> FORTRAN, although I missed FORTRAN I. So I'll use its evolution as an
> example.
>
> Ten years into its evolution, an ANSI committee was formed to standardize
> the language. Users and vendors sat around a huge table and thrashed out
> what would break the least code, what was easy to implement, what kinds of
> programs people wanted to write in the language that they couldn't, etc. The
> result was FORTRAN 66. 11 years later there was FORTRAN 77, etc.
>
> Now FORTRAN is 50 years old, there's a FORTRAN 95 standard, and the
> language is still in use (I think -- I haven't written any since 1990). Ruby
> is a tad older than ten years, and I think maybe it's time for some
> standardization on the syntax and semantics.
>
> I think there are enough "killer apps" now that we know what we can't take
> out of Ruby without breaking Rails, RSpec, Ruport, etc. And from MRI, KRI,
> jRuby and Rubinius, I think we know what's easy to implement and what isn't.
> But what I have no clues about is what programs people want to write in Ruby
> that they can't write now.
>
>
> This is the insightful point I was expecting after following such a  long
mail chain. Now I am implementing one Rails application which requires to be
supported by both MRI (1.8.5) and JRuby (1.0.3, compatible with MRI 1.8.5).
I found so many inconsistencies between these two "Ruby". (Or Rubies?). Even
the MRI test cases can not pass in JRuby. That's painful.  I remembered
Charles Nutter asked Matz in RubyConf 2007 if there is going to have any
specification for Ruby. But apparently it doesn't happen.

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