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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Let's be honest. When people "use Ruby", it's very unlikely that they are using JRuby or Ruby 1.9. Similarly, when people "use Python", they are using 2.7 or lower, not 3.1.

The reason is because the older versions of each are the ones with the libraries.

But interestingly, this is not the case with Perl, as new releases have 99% backcompat with old releases. Even old code that uses a new piece of syntax (like "say" from 5.10) in the old way continues to work!

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I don't have any hard numbers, but there's been a massive uptake in 1.9 since the release of 1.9.2. I've been doing all of my projects in 1.9 for a while now, and I very rarely run into compatibility errors.

How do you know there's been a massive uptake when you don't have any numbers? Aren't you just guessing?

I'm pretty involved in the ruby community, and I've generally seen an increase in people talking about using it. Also with the Rails 3 release, lots of people were waiting to do one big massive upgrade of both Ruby and Rails at the same time. It's been long enough now that lots of people have moved their projects over.

Like I said, I have no numbers, so fundamentally it is just a guess.

That's correct it's just a guess.

And of course this is just a guess too - "It's been long enough now that lots of people have moved their projects over."

Maybe we could step from wag to anecdote if there has been a straw poll at some recent Ruby conference asking which version the attendees were using?

It's a guess, but if you're part of the community (and I am) it's at least an educated guess :) I'm developing in Ruby 1.9 as well.

If you say that you're using Ruby 1.9 then not wanting to be quarrelsome that's good enough for me to accept that you are using Ruby 1.9.

And I'll grant that you're part of the community on your say so.

But being "part of the community" doesn't magically enfuse you with knowledge about what proportion of the community is using what version of Ruby. To be educated about that is to count the numbers.

Let's be honest. When people "use Ruby" (or Python) you really don't know what proportion of them are using which version.

The reason is you have no data.

But interestingly, this is also the case with Perl - you have no data.

I have a lot of data: http://stats.cpantesters.org/pmatrix-month.html

You might as well have linked to NCAA Basketball scores!

Let's be honest. When people "use Ruby" (or Python) you really don't know what proportion of them are using which version. And the data you have a lot of does not help with that.

Nor does the data you have a lot of tell us what proportion of Perl users use which version of Perl.

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