(Motion Sickness

Denver, 2006

I waited for the registration to open - and then as soon as it did I signed up. Why? I'm not sure. It seems like Ruby is catching on. I thought there would be an atmosphere sort of like RailsConf. Plus it was in Denver and the family of my beautiful wife lives in Denver. I had fun and I'm glad I went, but I can't say I was overly impressed. In fact, I felt a little dismayed about the state of Ruby after this conference.

Courtesy of the State of Texas

My employer even paid for a portion of the trip. Which is rare in state government. To get paid to go to an out of state conference is unheard of really. I'm not sure how I finagled that. I just said Ruby was the new big thing. Which it quite possibly is. I should have told them "Rails" is the next big thing. Although to me it's not 'next'. It's the present. It seems strange to me when people have not heard of Ruby or Python.

As usual I didn't hardly speak with anyone. I just listened. Which I enjoy. I prefer to play the role of observer and whenever I force myself to talk I just say something stupid anyway. So it's best for me to say nothing.

Not ready for prime time

One feeling I got from the convention was that Ruby is not actually ready for prime time. I don't mean 'enterprise' with all it's negative connotations, I just mean, aside from Rails, there's not much I would trust it with now. I thought "If I were to build an application for my friends, what would I use?" And the answer to that question is Python. With all its quirks. Even though there were a lot of Joel Spolsky jokes going around the Ruby conference, I have to say I sort of agree with him. If I am building an application today (one that is not a web application), for clients or friends, I wouldn't use Ruby. Not quite yet.

A lot of misplaced hopes are weighing on YARV. The saviour. But I was suprised to see that it is just a research project by some guy. And it is by no means an easy task. I don't see how one guy can compete against the team of Sun programmers working on an optimized VM. I think what Evan Phoenix is doing is much more interesting. Something called 'Rubinius' that is a new interpreter for Ruby, written in Ruby. This reminds me of an early PyPy and I think this kind of project is actually vital to both languages. Otherwise the GIL will hold them both down forever. Now that computers are expanding horizontally.

They are just copying Python

There were many things discussed at the convention. And quite a few times I thought - "Oh, Python solved that a few years ago". I'll admit I have all sorts of problems with Python too. It's just barely ready for prime time. Years and years of work have paved the way - and people are trying to force Ruby into the same position - but without those years of work. For instance:

As near as I understand it, in a little over a year I can expect to use a Ruby interpreter that employees the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) method. Is that correct? So a year and half from now Ruby reaches what Python has now. Why is this so great? This seems terrible to me. Am I the only one that thinks this is bad news?

Rails frowned upon

Another problem, and this is unfortunate. I got a definite feeling whenever Rails was mentioned. This sort of combination of deflation, resignation, elitism, - I don't know how to desribe it. "Oh, yeah. Rails is great. Sure. Whatever. If your writing web applications". It seemed strange. It was not the same feeling I got from the Python convention whenever Zope was mentioned. Zope was the problem child. A framework whose rococco structure hints at an innate convolutedness within Python itself. At least when confronted with a large scale, ambitous project. Rails at RubyConf was the elephant in the room. As if the whole language were funded by IBM but noone wanted to say that. Like it was something to look down on. I did not understand this at all.

Ruby people are 'friendly'?

No. Sorry. I don't buy into this one. I've been to the Python convention and I've been to the Ruby convention. I've signed up for various Google groups. I've read hundreds of blogs. Read thousands of mailing list entries. Ruby people aren't any friendlier than any other group of people. No more, no less. There is plenty of arrogance to go around among programmers, and Ruby is by no means immune. In fact, this attitude of disdain for Rails is worrisome. It's like the same attitude people get when their favorite band gets popular. "I like their early stuff. Because I am a superior person with superior taste." That is how it translates to normal English. It's the hatred of the normal - the distrust of the mainstream. My attitude is that if something is good, people will eventually realize it.

Ruby will be forced through anyhow

In the end, I had the feeling that there are forces at work greater than anybody at this conference. I don't mean God. I mean Industry. Programmers. Fashion. Coolness. These are the kind of things forcing Ruby through the keyhole that Python created.

The Conference itself?

I think conferences are more like religous meetings than anything else. And I was a recent convert attending. I thought Tim Bray and Zed Shad gave great presentations. Tim Bray concentrated on Unicode. He explains things better than I can here . And Zed Shaw's talk is summarized in pigeon english here . The RFuzz package looks like Zed Shaw is doing more great work. If it weren't for Mongrel I probably wouldn't even be using Ruby. And, of course, Ruby on Rails. Someone asked me how many other RubyConfs I had attended (1 is bad - 5 is "I saw them in '72 in a small club with 30 other people). I said "Oh, I'm just one of these Rails people, you know..."