I don't think that's exclusive to the Valley, and I've never really understood it.
One of the things I miss about living in a smaller place is when a band would come to town, they would generally play at a smaller venue than they would for a place like SF. After the show, you could go up and talk to them, shoot the shit, etc... The funny thing was, most people still wouldn't take advantage of that opportunity. I usually did, and I got to talk to a lot of cool people because of it.
But while an iconic indie rock legend is still a bit different that someone like Mark Zuckerberg, people are still just people.
my understanding is that rubinius is production ready (and "first class") software today. If they could offer a real performance improvement over MRI 1.9 they would be more compelling.
Rubinius is also a much more compelling environment to develop the Ruby language in, but they just don't support Windows and all the 1.9 changes yet.
I would say that Rubinius needs to be significantly faster than MRI and production ready to be successful. Otherwise, it's an "option" and having "lots of interesting options" at the level of your language is actually detriment to your development process. As someone said, you want your setup to be "as boring as possible" so you can concentrate on your application code instead.
Having "lots of exciting choices" in your web server, your database, your object server, your language implementation, or monitor size just says your time will be sucked from real work.
<almost a flame> I have been tempted, in the past, to wildly claim that if you compare Rubinius' relative failure compared to PyPy, Rubinius is kind of a poster-child of Test Driven Development's failure. IE, languages need semi-formal specs, not tests that claims they are a standard (no amount of testing can prove two implementation equivalent). </almost a flame>
<CAVEAT>But listening to the PyPy folks describe their process, I realize this stuff is uber-hard and I'd just like to hear what a real compiler developer would say about this. </CAVEAT>
This rant seems misplaced. Rubinius adopted a test driven approach for testing Ruby compatibility because Ruby doesn't have a spec, merely a reference implementation. The spec is being worked on, but the fact that it doesn't exist has more to do with Matz and Ruby's culture than Rubinius. Further, your other objections also appear to be rooted in a misunderstanding of Ruby's culture. The fact that there are lots of choices in the Ruby's ecosystem is what Ruby is about. Hell, choice is built right into Ruby with its inheritance model. Python is the opposite, and I'm guessing that's what your background is in.
I'm not sure not if software development questions should be solved with a reference to "Ruby's culture". Wouldn't "what works best" be a better criteria?
I've done more Ruby than Python altogether. It's true that I am no longer doing Ruby - mostly because it is too slow for anything beyond a fairly simple web platform (I would welcome an improvement in Ruby performance).
I would argue that the time spent on the tests could instead be spent on an actual spec.
Did you stop programming in Ruby before 1.9.1? Most common performance issues were fixed in that release. If you need something faster than 1.9.1, you probably should be dropping down to C anyway.
The thing is; C# and Java are also fast enough for an adequate desktop GUI. But they're horrible to program in.
Ruby and Python are still in about the same category of slowness even with pypy's success. I'm doubtful of Python desktop apps but I know they are out-there.
PyPy had head start of almost 4 years. I remember when Rubinius was started, people talked about how self-hosting dynamic language environments have been a failure and they sited PyPy as an example after Millions in funding from European Union.
All rubinius really needs is a non-overlapping set of bugs with MRI and JRuby. That would give it a niche to springboard from. I've been hammering all three with a project which is heavily threaded, and heavily socketed. These are both classic problem areas for MRI, and I've been cranking out JRuby bug reports as well. If rubinius got it right, then we'd be using it instead, but it's not quite there yet.
I don't know how any reasonably intelligent person could continue to stubbornly insist that stuxnet was too lame to be done by a government agency. This isn't even a question, of course it was. It isn't even speculation anymore. The only question is which one(s).
Yeah, good point - I would lump that in as being the same thing. They usually get companies like General Dynamics to do this type of thing. Point is, it wasn't amateurs or "basement patriots," and it cost a lot.
Have you worked at any large companies and had success with that? I'm used to dealing with people who don't know who wrote the agreement, have given it to thousands of others "without a problem", and treat me like I am a bit odd for actually reading it, let alone trying to change something.
Yes actually I've pushed changes back at companies like Cingular and AT&T, and semi-large consulting firms like NCS Tech, and others. The HR rep will usually think I'm odd, but it's saved my butt at least once, so it's worth a couple odd looks:)
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. -Thomas Paine
Man, you are clearly speaking from a position of privilege on that one. How the hell do you hold back 6-12 months salary when you can barely afford the rent, utility bills and the costs of raising some kids to begin with?
Haha, just hold back 6 months salary! You make it sound so easy!
It's not that they didn't prepare, it's that many of them have no means to prepare, and barely have the means to continue as is.
Many also believe that it is worth risking living on the edge to support a better school for their kids (ideally breaking the cycle), than moving to project housing and dangerous gang-controlled areas in order to enjoy their "margin of safety". I can't fault them for that.
And, if you're in such a position, and aren't fortunate enough to have your area of expertise and interest involving computers, good luck getting a job without a degree. So what do they do to pay for the outrageous tuition costs these days? Take a giant loan from Sallie Mae.
If you're willing to move, and live with roommates, it's fairly easy to live comfortably (assuming no children) on 12k/year total. Assuming you're making minimum wage-ish, that's 8k to put in the bank every year.
yeah, what? that's a lot of assumptions. people don't live with assumptions, they live with the realities of having a kid or a spouse or a family or even a girl they just can't get over.
I was responding to a post about 'holding back 6 months salary' as a safety measure, with a simple example of how to do so. Obviously, this is something to do before you go and start a family. My point was not that it's possible for everyone, but rather that it's not as unthinkably hard to do as one might think, even on minimum wage.
