From: Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@...>
Date: 2010-03-19T01:16:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Recommended way to install Rubygems

On 19/03/10 at 01:01 +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Mar 18, 2010, at 10:53 AM, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> 
> > On 19/03/10 at 00:35 +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> >> On Mar 18, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> >> 
> >>> Note there are not many development communities that are proud of
> >>> the fact of having different, incompatible versions of the same
> >>> software being widely used at the same time.
> >>> 
> >>> Most other communities solve that by having more stable APIs and
> >>> making sure that their important software supports the latest API.
> >> 
> >>> Of course, if you want to install many different Ruby and gems
> >>> versions, and then try to keep them in a sensible state wrt
> >>> security issues (which are not that uncommon in the ruby world),
> >>> that's your choice.
> >> 
> >> You have lost the high ground in the civility argument.
> > 
> > Why? What do you disagree with?
> 
> I wasn't agreeing or disagreeing with anything.  I was pointing out
> that you yourself have stopped being civil in the quoted comments
> above.

I disagree. I think that the following are true:
- changing APIs is not considered a big problem in the ruby community
- there are several versions of the interpreter being all widely used
  (ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7, and to a lesser degree unfortunately, 1.9.X)
- other scripting languages don't have as many API problems as ruby
  (look at perl or python -- well, python has some for python 3.X)
- ruby has had several security issues over the past year. Every complex
  and famous software package has some, that's life. But managing
  security when you have several versions co-installed manually is
  harder than when you just have to 'apt-get upgrade'.

Note that I'm a Ruby fan, and also a ruby library developer. I'm the
original author for XMPP4R, for example. What I wrote above are just
*facts* about Ruby, not insults.
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
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