Ruby pioneers come clean on the language's shortcomings

Ruby founder Yukihiro Matsumoto and Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson give a mixed account of the language. They highlight concise and readable code, support for multiple programming styles, a welcoming community, Ruby on Rails and RubyGems, and the focus on programmer happiness.

They also point to limits. Matsumoto says Ruby syntax can be hard to grasp at once, that it is slower than statically compiled languages, and that it has fewer applications outside web work, though SciRuby is addressing part of that gap. Hansson says Ruby is not a good choice for some niche applications and scales, that system-level languages are still sometimes needed, and that Ruby’s expressiveness can produce overly clever DSLs.

Reading notes

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• Matsumoto describes Ruby as concise, readable, and able to support object-oriented, functional, and metaprogramming styles.
• He says Ruby is fast enough for most cases and benefits from a welcoming global community, Ruby on Rails, and RubyGems.
• Hansson puts programmer happiness at the center of Ruby’s appeal and praises its breadth of paradigms and design.
• Hansson says Ruby balances change and stability better than JavaScript, Perl, or Python 3.
• Matsumoto says Ruby syntax can be too complex to absorb quickly.
• He also says Ruby is slower than statically compiled languages like Java or Scala.
• He notes fewer applications and libraries outside the web, such as research computing, and mentions the SciRuby project.
• Hansson says some niche applications and scale levels still call for Go, Rust, or C.
• He warns that Ruby’s expressiveness can encourage DSLs that are too clever.