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Comment by jamesbritt | Hacker News Reader

"So, where did the once-vocal Ruby community go?"

Well, it turns out there are many Ruby communities, some vocal, some not. Talking abut the Ruby community is going to end up missing a lot of what is going on.

Mostly, though when people talk about a singular Ruby community they mean Rails.

"In a world where a standard can take years to be discussed, approved, implemented and supported, Ruby standards such as Rack skip from conception to widespread support at blazing speed."

Wish the same could be said for Ruby itself. Everyone who's completely moved to 1.9, raise your hand.

Overall the points made are interesting, but much the same is happening in other language communities. People building stuff in Haskell, Clojure, JavaScript, Scala, etc. are more than happy to steal the best ideas from other realms and make them their own.

So long as people don't start believing in The One True Framework or The One True Languge, we're doing quit well.

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Seems like there are now around 1/4 on 1.9: http://survey.hamptoncatlin.com/survey/stats I expect that to increase a lot once 1.9.2 is out and Rubinius, MacRuby, and JRuby match the spec. And I raise my hand, I'm happily on 1.9 for over a year now.

"Rubinius, MacRuby, and JRuby match the spec."

What specs do they all match right now? The implementation teams are doing stunning work, but last I heard they were not all completely compatible and complete.

"And I raise my hand, I'm happily on 1.9 for over a year now."

Sure, but you're part of one those quiet Ruby communities that gets ignored by surveys such as Hampton's.

Rubinius, MacRuby and JRuby are all 1.8 implementations now with 1.9 still on the roadmap.

Well, it turns out there are many Ruby communities, some vocal, some not. Talking abut the Ruby community is going to end up missing a lot of what is going on. Mostly, though when people talk about a singular Ruby community they mean Rails.

I've noticed that you've said this a lot of times on here (and ruby-talk, if I recall) and you're right - it's just sad that you have to say it and that people still make the assumption you're trying to counter.

"I've noticed that you've said this a lot of times on here (and ruby-talk, if I recall) and you're right - it's just sad that you have to say it and that people still make the assumption you're trying to counter."

One, it bothers me that various good and smart projects (and the people behind them) get overlooked because they exist outside of some self-imposed scope of awareness. Among many Rubyists this means that if it isn't useful for Rails it doesn't exist, or doesn't matter. That people are spiting themselves with this myopia doesn't seem to make a difference. (My perhaps skewed impression is that many Rubyists are more likely to know about and appreciate ideas from non-Ruby projects, especially if the existing Ruby code is seen as a competitor to some favored app.)

I suppose, though, that if your particular community keeps repeating that it's the only community (e.g. Rails == Ruby), it just perpetuates.

Two, this diversity is equally true of many other communities. So far I don't see this sort of intra-tribalism among, say, Haskellites, and really hope that stays that way. There are many intriguing things happening in the worlds of Haskell, Clojure, and JavaScript[0], and a good part of this looks to be an openness to ideas and an appreciation of the diversity within their own ranks. And I want that to continue.

We have to remind each other to not get too comfy, to keep looking around, keep questioning things, and not get lazy and insular.

[0] And other places I'm sure, but these are where I've been trying to pay attention.

1.9.1 still has quite broken items, and 1.9.2 has even more broken stuff as it's very much still in development. This is why people haven't switched.

That said I'm starting to see people use 1.9.1 syntax in tutorials, tips and blog posts.

Give it until August. There are still some things that cause warnings in rails for 1.9.1, but otherwise the small speed boost is always helpful, and there some more delicious syntax stuff as well, like hashes having JSON syntax. This is awesome because you can switch between Javascript and Rails without typing => in your js files.

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