From: Joshua Ballanco <jballanc@...>
Date: 2008-11-19T03:53:30+09:00
Subject: Re: when will the ruby 2.0 be released?

On Nov 16, 2008, at 4:56 AM, Rockydd wrote:

> guys, I didn't find the schedule in the official site.
>
> Thanks.
>


Forgive me for saying this, but I think that version numbers are  
completely the _wrong_ way to think about programming languages! Sure,  
maybe at first, when a language is young and not capable of much, it  
makes sense to call it 0.8 or 1.0 or whatnot, but I think Ruby is past  
that point. I think this was apparent in Dave Thomas "Fork Ruby" talk.  
Ruby will advance through new implementations, new library methods,  
new variants, even if it doesn't progress through new versions.

The simplest way to think about it is to look at other languages.  
Languages like C, C++, SmallTalk, and Fortran don't have versions,  
they have specifications. Those specifications, though, work like  
Ruby's versions in some sense. That is, in one way, the Ruby version  
is the version for MRI, and in another way, the Ruby version describes  
a set of functionality that any other implementation must provide to  
call itself Ruby. So, think of the Major and Minor version numbers  
like a spec (1.6, 1.8, 1.9), and the revision and patchlevel numbers  
are more specific to MRI.

Now, look at something like Fortran. I know lot's of people who are  
still writing Fortran 77 code. That's a language that was designed 31  
years ago! Does that mean it's a dead or static language? Not by a  
long shot. Companies like Intel, IBM, and the Portland Group are still  
improving on F77 compilers, adding in support for SIMD and the like.  
Look at C++. It's working off a standard that's 10 years old. Sure,  
there's a new standard forthcoming, but much of what will appear in  
the new standard are things that people have already included in  
libraries like Boost, or in experimental branches of GCC and whatnot.

Also, consider that when Ruby 2.0 comes out, it will probably require  
a lot of in-depth work by the alternative implementation authors. It's  
probably best if that process takes a while. I'm thinking that the  
2013-2015 time frame for Ruby 2.0 sounds just about right.

My 2¢, anyway...

Cheers,

Josh