From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2003-08-20T19:17:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Evaluating Ruby objectively (not exactly)

Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@3DProgrammer.com> skrev den Wed, 20 Aug 2003 
18:47:50 +0900:

> So what do I need to know about Ruby that I haven't learned already?  
> Well,
> I'd like to know how appropriate people think it is as a systems 
> programming
> language.  Someone else said, scripting is good, embedded is bad.  What
> about huge honking piles of code?  What happens as you scale up?
>
I don't really have experience from scaling up much but to 5-10k
projects my experience is positive. No real surprises or changes from 
scripts/
100-1k projects. But I guess you mean in the 100k+ range and I doubt you 
will find much experience there when it comes to Ruby. I'm a bit at a loss 
as to what kind
of real differences you expect to find compared to Python or even Java for 
that
matter. IMHO, as things grow the design (independent of implementation 
language) and your process (lots of executable tests etc) is likely to be 
more important
than the language (even though Ruby tends to help me design better and have 
lots
of tests compared to other languages I've used).

Dave Thomas reported some positive experience with something like
(not really sure if it was that large) a 20k project he developed in a 
summer.
I'm sure you can google for a link...

> I'd also like to know, how much Ruby aficionados care about growth and
> promulgating the language.  Do you have, for instance, any working groups
> dedicated to the marketing of Ruby?  Or is your community not that
> specialized yet, or even interested in that yet?
>
I'd say we're generally the build-it-and-they-will-come, i-like-it-and- 
thats-enough or a-mans-skills-with-his-swords-is-his-own-responsibility
camps. ;)

Regards,

Robert Feldt