

Ruby 2.1.3 is released - matthewmacleod
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2014/09/19/ruby-2-1-3-is-released/

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colinbartlett
Very nice! It looks like this might solve memory usage issues in low-memory
environments such as cloud services like heroku?

Stock Ruby 2.1 was unusable on heroku because of this issue.

[https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9607](https://bugs.ruby-
lang.org/issues/9607)

~~~
thinkbohemian
Can confirm, I used this backport
[https://twitter.com/hone02/status/512254413000695808](https://twitter.com/hone02/status/512254413000695808)
codetriage.com memory usage dropped by about 200mb, saw my request time drop
and CPU load drop. Freaking amazing <3 <3 <3

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VeejayRampay
A big thank you to all committers, Ruby keeps getting nicer and nicer with
every release. Keep up the good work everyone!

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jxf
I'm a longtime Ruby user (among a number of other languages). I feel very
productive in Ruby right now, with Python being a close second. It's also
vital to the functioning of my current startup (along with Go).

And yet -- I feel like Ruby is growing stagnant. Don't get me wrong: 2.x has
brought lots of performance improvements, and some very smart people are
constantly making it better, for which I'm eternally grateful. But I can't
name a single 2.0-specific feature that I actually use. Refinements were the
biggest thing I can think of, and in an informal survey of some other CTOs I
know on Ruby stacks, nobody was directly using them.

Additionally, for a lot of the features I've come to love in other languages
(e.g. pattern matching), my impression is that no one's talking about them in
the Ruby community. Much of Ruby's success came from making it one of the most
enjoyable languages to develop in, and that's unquestionably still there. But
I stare wistfully across the sea to some of alternative choices, and I wonder
how much longer that will be true.

~~~
gkop
Ruby 2.0 introduced named parameters with default values and 2.1 introduced
required named parameters. These are useful.

For example, there are cases where you can replace options hashes with named
parameters and get rid of guard clauses for key presence as well as lines that
assign default values to keys in the options hash. And you don't have to index
an options hash of course. The splat operator can be used to pass upstream
options hashes to downstream methods taking named parameters so you can just
refactor the downstream-most methods taking the options hash and get all these
benefits.

~~~
jxf
This is true, and is a good counterexample to my point since I do use these on
an everyday basis.

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davexunit
TIL that Ruby uses GNU ChangeLog style commit messages. Makes for a really
nice change log. I wish more projects adopted this style.

~~~
__david__
Really? I dislike them intensely. They always seem "inside-out" to me and it
makes it really hard to group things into releases visually. I like Debian's
changelogs so much better because they are release oriented.

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haberman
I used to develop Ruby C extensions a lot, but I'm just now getting back into
the game. What Ruby versions are considered "current" enough that libraries
need to support them? Is the 1.9 line still in wide use? How far back in the
2.1 line is in common use?

Normally I wouldn't worry too much about this, except that I've heard that the
Ruby C API changes substantially from release to release. Is this true?
Anything in particular to watch out for?

~~~
gkop
You can expect libraries to follow Rails' lead.

The current rails (4.x) supports 1.9, but next year's rails (5.0) will require
2.x. So about the time that rails 5 comes out I would try to be ready to run
2.x in order to enjoy library compatibility.

~~~
haberman
That makes sense.

According to the download page
([http://rubyonrails.org/download/](http://rubyonrails.org/download/)), the
current Rails version requires Ruby 1.9.3 or newer.

Hopefully testing with Ruby 1.9.3 and the newest (Ruby 2.1.3) will give enough
assurance that it works on all the versions in between.

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irmbrady
Without being told to use a VM, installing Linux, buying a Mac, and without
settling for the 2.0.0-p481 release of RubyInstaller; is there any way for a
user to install _this_ version of Ruby on Windows?

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fdsary
I don't mean to come off as an ass, but just curious.

Why do you want to develop ruby (or anything else) with windows? Especially
since most servers (where ruby is popular) are linux servers? All colleagues
I've had running windows always seem to have to jump so many hoops that the
*nix crows don't.

Also, no unix shell and package managers, how do you deal with it?

~~~
irmbrady
I have used Ubuntu and Mac OS in the past, but I am currently favouring doing
all of my work on Windows. All of the tools I need run perfectly fine on
Windows (and many of them, not on Linux at all), and it would be a hindrance
to switch to another operating system.

It is only Ruby which is difficult to keep up to date on Windows. My question
was to try and find a solution.

I have tried using a VM (VirtualBox and VMWare), but it is not a desirable
work flow. I currently use RubyInstaller.

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SamonSL
I don't like Odd numbers and hope 2.1.4 comes out soon lol j.k :D

This upgrade will be very useful if you use threads or deploy your rails
server in threaded mode like in Puma.

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revskill
I hope to see whether Ruby could create a platform like Wordpress with that
strong community. A simple plugin system for the world to use and extend. Is
PHP stronger Ruby ?

~~~
timdorr
PHP has more ubiquity, so it's a least common denominator sort of thing. You
can find tons of hosts running a LAMP stack, but not so many supporting Ruby.
That is mainly because the tooling needed to maintain a Ruby application
server has some additional complexity over PHP, which is mostly plug-and-play.
Passenger helps a lot with that, but it's nowhere near the distribution level
of PHP, so that is restricting the ecosystem currently.

Basically, most people looking to setup a WordPress install can't deal with
even the simplest CLI. So things like Heroku or a one-click Digital Ocean box
are out.

This could be a good idea for a startup...

~~~
MrBra
I've always thought, if there was a simple, efficient way to simply <?Ruby
puts("use Ruby like PHP") ?> then a lot of good stuff could happen.

