[ruby-talk:7333] Re: A Java Developer's Wish List for Ruby

     I'd have to agree.  One other thing that I could see, which isn't 
     completely necessary, but big business loves it, is the ability to 
     compile or obfuscate the source code in some way, obviously this has a 
     large impact on Ruby, so this thought was meant more as a musing than 
     anything.  Businesses have that endless desire to protect their 
     "intellectual property", that would be difficult with Ruby as it 
     stands now.  Aside from the hype, I think that's a large reason why 
     businesses have gone to Java, they get something closer to Ruby (than 
     C or C++).  It's not like Java is the only language that is cross 
     platform, it's just one of few that compiles.
     
     In my opinion, it's languages like Ruby that will become the real 
     applications development languages within the next 5 years or so.  It 
     would be great to see one as good as Ruby be that language, but it 
     will take things like GUI capability and Unicode to bring that to 
     fruition.  I'm not sure that anyone here cares if any of that ever 
     happens.  I think most people are happy with Ruby as a lightweight 
     "scripting" language that they can prototype things with quickly or 
     just plain get the job done fast.
     
     Of course, I'm a nobody so my opinion isn't like to change anyone's 
     mind anytime soon :)


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: [ruby-talk:7330] A Java Developer's Wish List for Ruby
Author:  [e-mail] at smtplink
Date:    12/15/00 11:19 AM


I see Ruby as having a very bright future as a language to 
be used for purposes of system administration and rapid 
development of internal, non-commercial applications. Given 
the fact that much of the discussion in the ruby-talk 
mailing list centers on comparisons of Ruby to Perl and 
Python -- rather than Java or C++ -- it would seem that 
Ruby's current user community sees the language in that 
light as well.
     
Perhaps this is just as matters ought to be. No language 
should try to be everything to everyone. That said, **if** 
there is a desire to see Ruby widely used by application 
developers, especially those targeting international end user 
communities, the following personal comments may be of use.
     
I develop cross-platform applications that display and 
process text in multiple natural languages, including the 
East Asian ones. The optimal environment for developing such 
applications is one that provides native support for UCS-2 
Unicode. I've found that this is best satisfied by using 
Java on a Win32 platform with either an all-Java database or 
IBM's DB2 UDB with its "graphic" datatype.
     
Java isn't as elegant as Ruby, however. Nor is it really 
suitable as a language that one can use to incrementally 
transform a prototype into a production system. My wish 
therefore would be that Ruby could:
     
(1) be rebuilt with native UCS-2 support;
     
(2) offer an integrated GUI competitive with Java's Swing.
     
Or am I off base in trying to steer Ruby in the direction of 
becoming a general-purpose application development language 
competitive with Java?
     
- Richard Schulman