First person complains about
File.exists? changing to File.exist? and asks, as a "real" programming language, shouldn't it be backwards compatible? Sometimes we need to break compatibility. File.exists? was introduced around 1.4 and should have been removed earlier. The room did not like this question.Someone from the TI calculator division is looking to put Ruby as an interpreter on TI's next line of calculators.
- When will 1.9 be production ready? Christmas. (Ah, but what Christmas)
- When will there be a version of Ruby not encumbered by the GPL?
What do you think of the other VMs trying to run Ruby (JRuby, Rubinius, RubyCLR)? What do you think of the competition? Dealing with Ruby on the VM side is hard. He wants to compliment these teams on their accomplishments.
Does working on Ruby still make you happy? What is one of the most enjoyable moments? Started development in 1993. One of the initial things was to enjoy making it. The enjoyment of designing, implementing, and coding in Ruby continues.
What is the Ruby community like in Japan? Pretty much the same as here. Does the increase in Ruby usage have much of an impact on you?
What editor do you use? emacs
When can we expect to see a 1.9 feature list, so that we can start making changes to JRuby? Maybe before mid-November.
When it comes to Ruby, do you consider yourself to be a scientist? Hobbyist.
Can we expect the parse tree to be made available to normal programs, at some point? Probably not. It would be tough for us to support in the future.
What other languages are you paying attention to at the moment?
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Leopard has a ruby with dtrace built-in. Have you or others on the core team used it? Never used dtrace by itself.
Do you want to join us next year for the European Ruby conference? Maybe.
Rails has propelled the popularity. Do you see another project that could boost Ruby in the same way?
Is there a time when you say to yourself, "Ruby might not be the right tool for the job"? There is some weakness on projects that have large teams (100 or so) and run for a long time. The rules of the game are changing, though. Team sizes are getting smaller and smaller to produce an effective tool.
I'm having trouble hearing Matz's responses.
Trotter: In the essay on Beautiful Code, you say that beautiful code is familiar. Is there anything that you haven't done in Ruby, because you want it to stay familiar?
What is your second favorite programming language? I love all programming languages except for several.
What would you remove from Ruby? ................................from Ruby?!
Someone from NASA asks have you ever studied the Toyota Production System in terms of dealing with defects?
Are continuations in or out in 1.9? You have to require additional libraries in 1.9. It is out of the core language, but will be available.
Can we settle on a final 1.8 spec? How about 1.8.6?
Are there any parallelism plans with the language?
You talked about selector namespaces in Ruby 2.0, what are your thoughts about it now? It's hard to do efficiently?
What is the difference between 1.9 and 2.0? 1.9 is the transition from 1.8 to 2.0. Ruby 2.0 will be a major enhancement with little to no thought about compatibility.
Is there any other project you would like to work on, besides Ruby? An emacs GMail reader.
Is there anything that you would like to see someone in the community make, that you don't have time for? Better the issue tracking and bug reports. Don't want it on trac with the python.
So, you've come to be called the Benevolent Dictator in the ruby community. There have been other imitators (JRuby, Rubinius, etc.) that may have other goals in mind. Have they taken some of your control away? How do you feel about that? If you design a language, you might be punished. For all the enjoyment he gets from Ruby, it is a cost he has to pay.
Do you see a difference between the code written by people in the states, or in Europe vs that written by people in Japan?
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You mentioned that you were interested in the Io programming language. In Io there are no keywords; everything is a method. Is this the way that Ruby will be going? Not the way that Ruby is going.
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Have you considered bundling some of activesupport into Ruby? Some of it will be coming in 1.9, but 2.days.ago will not.
What do you think of people with no programming experience, picking up Ruby as their first language? Ruby is designed for programmers. I am a programmer, so Ruby is designed for me. Might not be suited for an introduction to programming. Some parents don't give their children very sharp knives, but some do.
Someone might come into Ruby and use CSV.rb, where everone else is using fastcsv, because it is better. How do you see the standard library over time? Diversity is a good thing in general, so competing implementations can be useful over time. They can lead to confusion, though. Should there be someone watching over the standard library? Wish people would coordinate before they create a duplicate project.
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Last year, internationalization was a hot topic. Where does that stand today? It still is a hot topic.
Question about book publishing in Japan. What books are coming out over there, but not here (like cgi programming with ruby)? Are there more books being seen in Japan? Publishers used to send Matz a copy of new ruby books; not any more. In a small town, there are 50-60 Ruby books in the bookstore.
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What kind of programming do you do day-to-day? Uh, Ruby.
What is your favorite movie? I don't know. Matrix.
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