From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Felipe Contreras Subject: Re: [Administrivia] On ruby and contrib/ Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 14:21:24 -0500 Message-ID: References: <7vtxld30f2.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> <7va9n52zjc.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: Ramkumar Ramachandra , Greg Troxel , Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org, Jeff King , Jonathan Nieder , Thomas Rast , =?UTF-8?Q?Ren=C3=A9_Scharfe?= , Michael Haggerty , Matthieu Moy , =?UTF-8?B?Tmd1ecKtbiBUaMOhaSBOZ8O3Yw==?= , Ramsay Jones , Erik Faye-Lund , Johannes Sixt , Johannes Schindelin To: David Lang X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Jun 07 21:21:34 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ul2E6-0000Eh-Do for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:21:30 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756069Ab3FGTV0 (ORCPT ); Fri, 7 Jun 2013 15:21:26 -0400 Received: from mail-la0-f42.google.com ([209.85.215.42]:45316 "EHLO mail-la0-f42.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755878Ab3FGTVZ (ORCPT ); Fri, 7 Jun 2013 15:21:25 -0400 Received: by mail-la0-f42.google.com with SMTP id eb20so4051912lab.29 for ; Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:21:24 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; bh=RNuKQnA8QLyMF2hmeuSMRLVapvoUCzDkhSpo6jvLqr8=; b=jOYU27GjxSzEksLIidXMZKMusTpBCQbyc3OoJZ2H//g34MVJxNv6Q8WmZN2qCgZKhc 7gVtd2dCDQd1+f6J7ptoy5UnKD5rOCvMt+bkBwsSK/kLMJqnHsw3wojyyBGt+SLzU9Tl 5/apwPTYQlOdABhs4jPY++7p6rS5HapQJOnD63dC/pH41g9MD55vPR1M0p3vFKXMq0z+ WhxTn1/VVDEiLluz5P+qUF1BN8sGsgScAgaWsv5xIdYL+gZAZoR8gcOUi1WJbJUlwc+G 2Pqjj3mAd22NOWX348jU84sG3c6JEKb9ioLYOvvJHzT+qtsVPIQqaYqTENwt3GV++Ilr 67yg== X-Received: by 10.152.7.74 with SMTP id h10mr9078laa.83.1370632884255; Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:21:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.114.59.202 with HTTP; Fri, 7 Jun 2013 12:21:24 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 3:19 PM, David Lang wrote: > On Fri, 7 Jun 2013, Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote: > >> David Lang wrote: >>> >>> Perl use may or may not be declining (depending on how you measure it), >>> but >>> are you really willing to take on the task of re-writing everything >>> that's >>> in Perl into another language and force all developers of scripts to >>> learn >>> that other language? what's the ROI of this? >> >> >> Let's not talk hypotheticals. git-svn.perl (+ perl/SVN/*.pl) is >> absolutely massive. It's an incredibly useful tool in that it >> actually works, and that there is nothing replacing it in the >> foreseeable future. This monster was written almost entirely by one >> brilliant person, and nobody is going to rewrite it. We don't start a >> huge discussion about what languages are "approved" before accepting >> such a contribution: if the contributor wants to write something in a >> dominant language (Perl in this case), and it's going to be useful, we >> merge it. End of story. > > > Well, Felipe is saying that Perl is dieing and we should re-write everything > that exists in Perl to Ruby. No, I said we should try to move away from Perl. Move stuff to C, shell scripts, and yeah, Ruby. >> Why are we discussing something that is indeterminate? It is >> impossible to foresee the future, but that is no reason to freeze >> _present_ development. > > and it's not a reason to throw away existing stuff based on the argument > that Perl is dieing Who said anything about throwing away code? >> Nobody claimed that "press coverage" is a good metric. We can only >> talk about facts, and Felipe already showed you a TIOBE index graph. >> If you have overwhelming _evidence_ that Ruby is a weak language that >> will die soon, share it: otherwise, I see no value in this discussion. > > > TIOBE index graph is "press coverage" as far as I'm concerned. > > I'm not saying that Ruby in particular has a fatal flaw, I'm just > questioning the "Perl is dead, re-write everything in Ruby" mantra. > > The language that you choose to use when writing a new application is > related to things related to that type of application. > > Ruby is not an extremely common language for sysadmins to use. Who said we need a language commonly used by sysadmins for our Git core? > Perl remains a common language for these sorts of tasks, even if it's not > used for user visible applications. Ruby is pretty much a replacement for Perl. For every task Perl is good, Ruby also is. Ruby's syntax even borrows from Perl. The difference is; Ruby is better for many more tasks that suck in Perl. > Arguing that Perl is dieing, we need to abandon it is just wrong. Straw man. Nobody is arguing that. I said we should try to avoid it, not abandon it immediately. -- Felipe Contreras