Re: [gentoo-user] Ruby - 3 versions - seriously????

["Marvin Gülker" <m-guelker@phoenixmail.de>]

Am 04. September 2017 um 12:07 Uhr -0500 schrieb R0b0t1 <r030t1@gmail.com>:
> Even if they can not present an argument like I have,
> they will probably only notice it if it misbehaves in some way. If it
> misbehaves more than other software on their system, who is to say it
> isn't a poorly designed language and/or ecosystem?

I think that on a technical mailinglist you should convey your point
using technical arguments, not rhethorical ones. The reasoning is
errorneous. If your goal is not ultimate API stability, then Ruby's
design approach that focuses more on progress than on ultimate API
stability is not poor, but different. You can agree or disagree with the
goal, but you can't question the measures taken to implement it by first
stipulating a goal different from the one the measure was intended to
implement. Take a look at Ruby's versioning policy[1]; ultimate API
backward compatibility is not a design goal in minor versions of the
language. Ruby is simply not the right tool for the job if you want to
create for example an archive software that must run 20 years without
touching it.

Even though, the problem is not as dramatic as you seem to imply. I
stand by my point that using private C interfaces is the programmer's
fault and there is nothing to be standardised here. Real breaking
changes of documented behaviour like the Bignum/Fixnum one are rare, and
the effects are moderate. Most of the software written in Ruby will not
have a problem with running on newer versions.

Marvin

[1]: https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2013/12/21/ruby-version-policy-changes-with-2-1-0/