
Ruby Gets An Official Spec: Heading To Become An ISO International Standard - sant0sk1
http://www.rubyinside.com/ruby-iso-spec-draft-2900.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RubyInside+%28Ruby+Inside%29
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blasdel
Are there any languages for which international standardization processes have
not been either tombstones (like Smalltalk, repeatedly) or vehicles for inter-
corporate bullying?

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mbreese
That was my first thought too...

"Well, there goes innovation in Ruby".

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jdminhbg
Just because there's a standard doesn't mean you have to follow it. I'm sure
MacRuby for example will keep its divergent selector syntax; they just won't
advertise themselves as conformant to the standard.

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jamesbritt
"they just won't advertise themselves as conformant to the standard."

But they _should_ advertise themselves as non-conformant to the standard.

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bugs
Hopefully this turns out well for the community.

Some advantages I can see being based on ruby 1.8.7 is that now people will
have a specific language to develop libraries for, also new people to ruby can
have something specific to start with (rather than having to chose between
1.9/1.8).

Those that still want to move so quickly can still choose to do so and
continue to use and support 1.9 they just might not have the same following as
before.

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incomethax
I really enjoy the speed improvements that 1.9 affords, I can't help but think
this will bring back the arguments that Ruby is a slow language simply because
the "standard" implementation is slow.

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steveklabnik
Just because 1.8.7 will be 'standard' doesn't mean that MRI has to remain the
standard interpreter for it.

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philwelch
In fact, standardization and a written spec will make it more likely that
faster interpreters will be written for it.

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codahale
I want to be excited about this, but there are big gaps in this spec.

For example, "blah"[0] should return an Object instance which represents "b".
Could be a Fixnum. Could be a String. Could be a JPEG of some ASCII art
representing the essence of "B." Any of those responses would be valid
according to RubySpec.

What happens when you shadow a local variable with a block variable is
unspecified, too. In 1.8.x, it overwrites the variable. In 1.9, it doesn't.

Even with a "RubySpec-compatible" implementation, you have no way of knowing
if your application will run or not, which kind of defeats the purpose.

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rbanffy
I think it's an opportunity to test whether the damage the approval of OOXML
caused caused to ISO affects this standardization process or not.

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c00p3r
...and RoR to become the new J2EE.

hey, certification-backed trolls! Time to get new certs! =)

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jon_dahl
This is a formal language spec (e.g. Here is what happens when you call the
"foo" method), not a developer certification. Previously, there was no spec,
so official Ruby behavior was "whatever the interpreter did". This would have
been really useful when projects like JRuby and Rubinius were earlier along.

~~~
c00p3r
There will be lots of RoR certification, because certification is a business
itself. Think of SAP or Cisco.

Usually certification does not required for a gifted artist, because his
abilities are self-evident, but for low-skilled craft man to prove that he
possibly could not fail. It is a trick to not to show your abilities each
time, because it is extremely difficult to you - think a certificate of sexual
ability for impatient - for a healthy man it is not a problem to "prove his
ability" =))

mr. Nabokov, for example, didn't got TOEFL before he wrote his "Lolita". TOEFL
is required only for pidgin-speakers, like me, and after some amount of
practicing it become useless.

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francoisdevlin
Well, looks like Ruby just got boring.

