Matz: Saturday Keynote
Posted by Kevin Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:50:00 GMT
Language matters…or not?
Twitter made a 1000% performance gain with mysql, solaris, and dtrace. No language change. So if many languages provide similar feature-sets, what is the difference?
Attitude
Python believes in a “one true way,” while ruby believes in diversity.
Ruby is doing well – Martin Fowler of thoughtworks was telling me that ruby is making his life difficult, since if thoughtworks employees can’t use it, they quit. :) And that seems great, since there is business value in fun; after all, there is lots of gain in programmer productivity based on enthusiasm.
Ruby 1.9:
- Major incompatibilities include encoding jank and block argument restrictions
- Minor incompatibilities abound, including File.exists? [which some guy had asked about the previous night]
- Lots of new features – he showed off external iterators
Languages (and empires) go through cycles:
- Humble beginning
- Success
- Pride
- Conflict/War
- Drop to nothing
Ruby is somewhere between success and pride, so at least we know where we’re headed. :) We will eventually go enterprisey to please the “suit people” – yeah, I know, I don’t want to either. :)
We’ve got such an awesome, nice, smart community. Let’s change the world!