Re: [jruby-user] Re: JRuby is much more than a Java version of MRI Ruby

Fred -

I'm sure the JRuby team understands the benefits of compatibility with 
the latest versions of Ruby.

As I see it, their efforts to bring Ruby to the JVM, even without full 
2.1 compatibility yet, are already heroic.

JRuby is an open source project with limited resources; and the authors 
are individuals with limited amounts of time.

As for me, I write mostly gems, and I choose *not* to use new language 
features, not only so that I can run JRuby, but also so that the users 
of my gems can run them even if they are using older (yes, unsupported, 
I know) versions of Ruby.  (I currently draw the line at 1.9, using 1.9+ 
features.)

You might want to consider this if you want your code to be runnable 
inside other Ruby code (that is, if you want your Ruby code to be 
callable in Ruby as opposed to only running on its own.)

To me, the newer features are not that compelling as to justify my 
losing those benefits.

Of course you're right that it would be better to have that 2.1 
compatibility now, but please understand that resources are limited and 
acknowledge the effort that has already been made by the JRuby team.

- Keith



Keith R. Bennett
http://about.me/keithrbennett

On 8/31/2014, 9:42 AM, Fred M. wrote:
> I am the creator of RubyNEAT and would love to be able to run my Ruby
> Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies implementation on JRuby mainly
> to gain some speed benefits and also to leverage multicore concurrency.
>
>
> I have elected to make my code fully Ruby 2.x and I do make heavy use of
> metaprogramming, named parameters, and other features of 2.x. Because of
> this, I cannot run on Rubinus or JRuby until they become fully 2.x
> compliant.
>
>
> I think it is very important for all MRI-alternatives for Ruby to be
> able to talk the same talk and walk the same walk. In an ideal world,
> the latest Rails stack or Sinatra or the vast majority of Gems not using
> extensions should just run "out of the box" on JRuby.
>
> To do otherwise would hurt JRuby and cause a fracture in the Ruby
> community, forcing developers to chose what they will write for with
> their limited resources or to have to resort to special-casing their
> code for both environments.
>
> This has happened already with C++ in the past, is still a bugaboo with
> JavaScript (though the condition has vastly improved over the past and
> the frameworks do a good job of hiding the few remaining warts).
>
> Also, I am working hard on introducing Machine Learning to the Ruby
> world, which has been neglected up till now.
>
> Compatibility is the Synergy of Über-excellence.
>