The JVM is as performant as it is because so much resources were invested in optimization (including various forms of JIT etc). It's an amazingly performant VM because of so much invested in tuning it. Or same about various Javascript VMs.
This kind of performance comes from lots of resources invested in tuning. Lots of resources are invested, generally, when there are lots of entities relying on a thing; that's a very good reason people invest in improving a thing, right?
So I'm not really sure what you mean -- you say "sunk cost", I say "Well, those who are using a thing are those who invest in improving it, how is it ever any different? And that there are people with current investments in ruby who will continue to invest to improve it is what will make ruby continue to thrive -- and how is it ever any different with any technology?"
What would make it "sunk cost", i suppose, is if you think ruby is a poor technology and everyone using it should switch to something else. I guess it is popular to hate on ruby right now, but that seems to be an orthogonal debate. Ironically, one of the most popular reasons to hate on ruby is "performance" (rightly or wrongly), so it seems especialy weird to me to show up with an argument like "Sure, they're drastically improving ruby performance, but is ruby the right choice of thing to improve it's performance? After all, ruby has such bad performance!"
To be fair, you didn't specifically say "because ruby has such bad performance", you didn't say anything about why ruby might be the wrong thing to invest in at all -- which makes it all the more just weird FUD, intentionally or not.
You are suggesting that just in general we should prefer switching to new languages over investing in the existing ones? Since you didn't supply any specific arguments, it makes it seem as if you suggest this as a general principle, regardless of details? I think many of our experiences is that this leads to always using immature technology; to reach the stability and performance of (say) the JVM or V8 requires... investing in the thing, not constantly chasing a new immature thing hoping it will be different this time.
This kind of performance comes from lots of resources invested in tuning. Lots of resources are invested, generally, when there are lots of entities relying on a thing; that's a very good reason people invest in improving a thing, right?
So I'm not really sure what you mean -- you say "sunk cost", I say "Well, those who are using a thing are those who invest in improving it, how is it ever any different? And that there are people with current investments in ruby who will continue to invest to improve it is what will make ruby continue to thrive -- and how is it ever any different with any technology?"
What would make it "sunk cost", i suppose, is if you think ruby is a poor technology and everyone using it should switch to something else. I guess it is popular to hate on ruby right now, but that seems to be an orthogonal debate. Ironically, one of the most popular reasons to hate on ruby is "performance" (rightly or wrongly), so it seems especialy weird to me to show up with an argument like "Sure, they're drastically improving ruby performance, but is ruby the right choice of thing to improve it's performance? After all, ruby has such bad performance!"
To be fair, you didn't specifically say "because ruby has such bad performance", you didn't say anything about why ruby might be the wrong thing to invest in at all -- which makes it all the more just weird FUD, intentionally or not.
You are suggesting that just in general we should prefer switching to new languages over investing in the existing ones? Since you didn't supply any specific arguments, it makes it seem as if you suggest this as a general principle, regardless of details? I think many of our experiences is that this leads to always using immature technology; to reach the stability and performance of (say) the JVM or V8 requires... investing in the thing, not constantly chasing a new immature thing hoping it will be different this time.