The news of Iron Ruby possibly being euthanaized by Microsoft sincerely surprised me. I have long felt that the Iron projects are a nod to the real developer from a corporation that often panders to the drag and drop community. Pointing resources at an initiative that will never make them money (in a measurable way) caused many of us to believe that there was a part of MS that was inspired to give back to the people that have been building applications and bringing them Windows and SQL Server hosting fees for years.
This comes on the heels of Microsoft.Data.dll and Visual Studio Light Switch being announced. It's very difficult to get a reputation in the development world as a skilled and knowledgeable contributer when your primary focus is .NET. Many look at us like bubblegum coders, not really able to tread water without our WYSIWYG IDE This type of progression does not help.
I really hope it is not the intention of MS to phase out Iron Ruby and it is all just rumor and happenstance. I know that either way I will be continuing my pursuit to learn Ruby better and keep filling up my toolbox. I will be keeping a close watch as the rest of this story unfolds.
In other news Rob Conery is working to rally the troops for a triage mission. If it comes down to it, it will be hard for me to say "If MS doesn't care about keeping this project alive why should I?" However, I do see IR as a valuable resource for diversifying the .NET community. I would love to be a part of this should the gauntlet be thrown.
Bubblegum coder, huh?
ReplyDeleteThe Iron Ruby work probably needs like 2-3 developers full time. You'd think MS would do that just for bragging rights. Its not like a handful of devs will make a dent in anybody's budget over there.
I want the scala port to be functioning myself:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/743172/is-scala-net-production-ready
It would be interesting to hear more on the whole bubble gum coder phenomena. A blog entry on how you feel .net developers are received, based on your experiences, would be really cool.
ReplyDeletePlus it would probably start a shit storm, so make sure to use my amazon referral code in there somewhere.
I'm probably one of those "drag and drop, bubble gum" coders and you know what? I don't care that "real" programmers look down on me. The focus of my work is to solve problems for people. To do that I want to good, sound, elegant code, but that's how to achieve the result I want - a solid, reliable system that meets the users needs. Because the user's don't care if you program the system in Assembly, Pascal, LISP, .NET, C++, etc. They want a functioning system that works.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to have to memorize all of the APIs'/class interfaces to do my work. Bring on the IDE!!! I'm mean what's the point in progress if you can't use it to make your life easier? We used to have to program in Assembly Language once upon a time...do we all want to go back to that?
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ReplyDeleteThe "prime directive" of software development must be to meet requirements. Often those requirements include time and money. If you can do that with an elegant and easily maintained design so much the better, but it's a lower priority.
ReplyDeleteAs far as being considered a "bubblegum coder" don't worry about it. There are just some people out there who can't be objective where MS is concerned or feel that God intended us to program for Unix/Linux exclusively. You can't change their religious beliefs, so don't waste your time trying.
If you are a skilled and knowledgeable developer, it doesn't matter what language or platform you work on. I don't see why .NET developers would be perceived as any more skilled just because they write code in IronRuby as oppose to C# or VB.NET. In my part of the world, there are little difference between individuals who work on different platforms (Java/.NET)
ReplyDeleteWe are here to solve problems by developing solutions. To do this, we've always invented better tools and higher abstractions, reducing the amount of work we need to do to solve problems.
I don't think it's a good idea for a single company to have to many options and Microsoft have always been an platform enabler. They should focus on the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) and enable third parties to build languages that runs on it. They already have C# and VB.NET and a few other languages, why would it be a good thing to have a single vendor controlling that many languages?
Building tools (and languages) that makes it easier to build software and enables more people to actually develop software, is a very good thing! We don't have enough developers in the world and especially not enough who are extremely skilled.
Who are we to say that those individuals shouldn't be allowed to build software using Microsoft WebMatrix and Visual Studio LightSwitch?
In the end of the day, it's the ability to make customers happy that matters to most of us. If someone feels like a "bubblegum coders", it's ones own fault and one should consider moving to another platform.
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i presume you wanted to use french to mean "and you". If there's commonly only one personal pronoum used in english to tell about "you", in french there is several... commonly used.
Take a look at this page: http://www.synapse-fr.com/manuels/PERSO.htm
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ReplyDeleteI really hope it is not the intention of MS to phase out Iron Ruby and it is all just rumor and happenstance. I know that either way I will be continuing my pursuit to learn Ruby better and keep filling up my toolbox. I will be keeping a close watch as the rest of this story unfolds.
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