From: Fabian Streitel <karottenreibe@...>
Date: 2009-07-02T04:47:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Best OS packages for Ruby?

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>
> Perhaps.  But if you are running 1.8.7, and writing code for general
> distribution, is there not a real chance you will end up with code that only
> works with 1.8.7?


That's exactly why the Java guys have the worst API ever conceived
(at least as far as I know).
If everyone's always whining about "No you can't take that feature out"
or "No don't change that behaviour" because it'll break some legacy
code then real progress is never gonna happen.

Like anything in IT, programming languages and their libraries have to
evolve or they'll just become a big heap of unusable deprecations.

And what comes with this is the responsibility of the programmer to keep
his code up-to-date. Or to keep the Ruby version the same for all eternity.
Whichever one prefers...

Also, I had the experience that the 2 or 3 features of 1.8.7 you use, which
are not present in 1.8.6 are fairly easily emulated, e.g. Array#group_by
and fellows.

(Just my two cents ;-)

Greetz,
k

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