[aeturnum]

This is a weird response to a weird article. The original article doesn't define its terms and, as Robby points out, that makes it hard to critique. If a language is only "serious" if it can scale infinitely for all use cases then sure Ruby isn't serious - most languages aren't.

That said - this response and the critique seem to basically agree. The critique can be summed up as "Ruby doesn't work forever" (and so it should never be used) and this is saying "Ruby doesn't work forever" (which is fine). I could almost understand this post as saying: 'Ruby isn't serious and that's not a problem for anyone who uses it.'

I will say that I found it funny that the original article attacked Ruby for being all the way down at "18th place" (This is inaccurate - it's 14th in 2024) on the SO dev survey - while talking up Scala which is 9 places further down on the survey[1].

[1] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular...

[pizlonator]

> "Ruby doesn't work forever"

Where does the response even address this?

All I know is that Ruby code I wrote 10ish years ago is still going strong, for example a whole compiler https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/tree/main/Source/JavaScript...

[aeturnum]

Here's some places I noticed it:

> critics love the Twitter example. But look closer. Ruby carried them further than most companies will ever reach. They outgrew their shoes. That’s not an indictment… that’s success.

> I’ve never seen a team fail because they chose Ruby. I have seen them fail because they chose complexity. Because they chose indecision.

> GitHub held the world’s source code together for years using Ruby.

There are many examples of companies that used Ruby at one point very successfully but moved on from it once it no longer fit their situation. This isn't a critique of Ruby! But it is agreeing that Ruby can be outgrown and that, if you are looking to start with a language your usecase probably won't ever outgrow, Ruby might not be the best choice.

[cxr]

> Ruby code I wrote 10ish years ago is still going strong, for example a whole compiler <https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/tree/main/Source/JavaScript...>

Neat. How is offlineasm used? (Without going into the details about the background of LLInt, that is—what I mean is, how is the compiler invoked?) Is it just the reference compiler, corresponding to some other machinery inside JSC?

[philipwhiuk]

It's also funny he wisecracks Java and then loves Scala for it's robustness (much of which it owes to Java).