Ruby – The language of choice?
Posted on September 4, 2007
Filed Under ruby | Leave a Comment
Okay, I have caught the Ruby bug. It’s like an itch, the more I scratch it, the more it needs to be scratched. Ruby is a great language. That’s a fact. Rails is a great web framework. That’s a fact. Somewhat over-hyped at the moment, but Rails will find it right place soon enough.
However, I’m more interested in Ruby the language. Ruby is coming to the masses by being the language of choice on the mainstream and widely accepted technology platforms. For example, JRuby brings the full power of the Java Runtime to Ruby programmers. Moreover, Ruby implemented on top of Microsoft’s DLR brings the .NET Runtime. What you are seeing here is Java and C# being displaced as the “only” and “incorrectly” the primary language of choice for the JVM and CLR respectively. Don’t get me wrong, I still think these languages have a purpose and will continue to be used going forward. However, when you are considering your next project that needs to run on top of these platforms, don’t assume that Java==JVM and C#==CLR.
There are viable alternatives…you’ve just got to be aware of them.
