Absolutely true! The merger-politics, the marketing missteps, and the cool technology that got buried are all epic.
Image-based development also didn't sit well with a lot of people
Not so true, for those who really "got it" and hit their stride, and anyone who comments who didn't get to that point is commenting as a clueless newbie. In image-based development, all of your programming meta-data are there as live Objects, instantly scriptable, totally and instantly obedient to your every whim. Ditto for runtime state -- everything available as live Objects and instantly scriptable. Really, once you learn a suitable style, it's heavenly, intoxicating and addictive. The same thing is true for Python and Ruby, but only about half as much. For example, a lot of advanced IDE functions require one to detect changes to files and re-parse things to keep programming metadata current. That problem just vanishes with image-based development. Literally hundreds of problems just vanish because everything is an object and they're all instantly available.
On the other hand, image-based deployment SUCKS. Sucks sucks sucks. Just about every Smalltalker agrees. The big advantage of being file based is that your development test environment resembles your deployment, or is at least halfway to deployment by comparison. Image-based Smalltalk development is like the ultimate monkey-patching uber-debugger. Very cool to develop in, but you do not want to give it to your users!
It likely has the side effect that that web searches will bring up a lot of obsolete articles.
Well, it turns out there are many Ruby communities, some vocal, some not. Talking abut the Ruby community is going to end up missing a lot of what is going on.
Mostly, though when people talk about a singular Ruby community they mean Rails.
"In a world where a standard can take years to be discussed, approved, implemented and supported, Ruby standards such as Rack skip from conception to widespread support at blazing speed."
Wish the same could be said for Ruby itself. Everyone who's completely moved to 1.9, raise your hand.
Overall the points made are interesting, but much the same is happening in other language communities. People building stuff in Haskell, Clojure, JavaScript, Scala, etc. are more than happy to steal the best ideas from other realms and make them their own.
So long as people don't start believing in The One True Framework or The One True Languge, we're doing quit well.
What specs do they all match right now? The implementation teams are doing stunning work, but last I heard they were not all completely compatible and complete.
"And I raise my hand, I'm happily on 1.9 for over a year now."
Sure, but you're part of one those quiet Ruby communities that gets ignored by surveys such as Hampton's.
I've noticed that you've said this a lot of times on here (and ruby-talk, if I recall) and you're right - it's just sad that you have to say it and that people still make the assumption you're trying to counter.
One, it bothers me that various good and smart projects (and the people behind them) get overlooked because they exist outside of some self-imposed scope of awareness. Among many Rubyists this means that if it isn't useful for Rails it doesn't exist, or doesn't matter. That people are spiting themselves with this myopia doesn't seem to make a difference. (My perhaps skewed impression is that many Rubyists are more likely to know about and appreciate ideas from non-Ruby projects, especially if the existing Ruby code is seen as a competitor to some favored app.)
I suppose, though, that if your particular community keeps repeating that it's the only community (e.g. Rails == Ruby), it just perpetuates.
Two, this diversity is equally true of many other communities. So far I don't see this sort of intra-tribalism among, say, Haskellites, and really hope that stays that way. There are many intriguing things happening in the worlds of Haskell, Clojure, and JavaScript[0], and a good part of this looks to be an openness to ideas and an appreciation of the diversity within their own ranks. And I want that to continue.
We have to remind each other to not get too comfy, to keep looking around, keep questioning things, and not get lazy and insular.
[0] And other places I'm sure, but these are where I've been trying to pay attention.
That said I'm starting to see people use 1.9.1 syntax in tutorials, tips and blog posts.
After reading this article, I checked out RVM and installed a couple different Ruby versions to play with. If you're doing anything with Ruby, I'd definitely suggest checking it out. Set up a 1.8.7-head install inside of RVM and fixed all my Jekyll woes. It also gave me a chance to play with Rubinius and the latest 1.9.3dev release.
I always enjoyed being able to use eselect to switch between Ruby versions on Gentoo and RVM is able to duplicate this functionality and then some.
Since the commit to fix Liquid for 1.9.1 was in April of 2009, I wonder why it's not the version on Gemcutter? (Or some version of that version, if there are other issues...)
Edit: Yup, just checked. Jekyll with Liquid 2.1 is fine on 1.9.1. (I'm on OSX here, but the 1.9.1 I checked is also patch level 378.)
All of that said, rvm is outstanding.
Don't know if that'd affect Jekyll, but I know it affected Rails.
I recall an unhappy core contributor awhile back ranting about how people file bug reports but not fixes; the reason is because it takes a significant time investment to find and fix problems if you aren't a core contributor and have no interest in becoming one.
Sinatra and Sequel do it right -- solid documentation, both on the website, and in the .rb files.
