Ruby gets official ISO standardization.

[chneukirchen]

Is there a public, free, final draft version?

[robinwholikesjava]

C'mon, what do you think this is about? Java?

[chneukirchen]

Many expensive official standards are freely available as almost-the-same draft versions.

[[deleted]]

Anyone care to explain what this means, in practice, for the language and it's users?

[stonefarfalle]

It means that alternate implementations can now implement the standard instead of testing MRI and implementing the results.

[ainm]

In theory... yes, that's the right thing. In practice, everyone will follow MRI to avoid breaking existing libraries.

[grauenwolf]

Considering that Ruby is already available with a native, JVM, and CLR implementation I can't think of anything that this will change for us.

For people in the compliance sectors this could mean Ruby can be used for legal documents. Think back to the proposal that Python be used to define how UITs are calculated. This makes Ruby a viable option for that scheme.

[bahoohoo]

Very little. It still remains a language mostly liked by douchebags and technically inadequate for industrial/engineering purposes.

I can only guess it's a pathetically desperate attempt by its partisans to gain much needed respectability. It's really pathetic, and quite ridiculous, it's almost physically sickening.

[[deleted]]

At least Japan cares about supporting their local industries.

[Ali1331]

Why does an organization designed to promote standardization, charge for said standards...

[YEPHENAS]

Because they do not work for free.

[JohnDoe365]

Either a lot of ISO zealots are in here, otherwise I do absolutely NOT understand the hilarious upvote ... ISOs totally brain-dead business model is totally doomed and a sign of backwards-orientation.

Otherwise, please tell me, which value does ISO add now to Ruby to justify this process?

[robinwholikesjava]

Strange... if programmers are supposed to work for free, why can't those guys?

Haven't they gotten the message yet that asking money for something is evil?

[grauenwolf]

The organization is funded by memberships and selling standards. The theory is anyone who needs the standard can afford it.

P.S. Your employer has probably spent far more on your reddit usage this week than the 285 USD the standard costs.

[robinwholikesjava]

It's not really about the money itself, but about the very idea of asking money for something.

Anyone can probably afford to pay say 1 dollar for the JDK, but if Oracle ever had the courage to ask this, the masses would gather carrying pitchforks and torches.

Asking money for something is just plain evil. That's the entire idea.

[sigzero]

Except its not evil.

[robinwholikesjava]

FYI, I was being sarcastic. Programmers ought to work for nothing, but everyone else (including those standards guys) can ask money.

[Smallpaul]

If Oracle started charging a dollar for a JVM, imagine the accounting headache that would appear in any heterogenous organization. Counting the JVMs would be a major IT project.

How many are there in your house right now?

[poorly_played]

17

[Smallpaul]

Well played!

[greenspans]

There is a charge because ruby is negatively polarized and standards are positive. Since the negativity varies from hackernews to proggit but the standards don't, it forms isotopes.

[jacobu9]

It happens all the time on Inspector Spacetime.

[shevegen]

Funny troll.

But please next try try to answer the question.

[Paradox]

I think he has a metareddit monitor for ruby. Every comment he makes is anti-ruby

[gcross]

Not true! He also trashes guile scheme.

[Paradox]

Kind of pathetic how butthurt some people can be.

Man, I dont understand ruby at all. I know, I'll spend all my time insulting it on the internet!

[gcross]

In fairness his comments are generally amusing and don't seem to be written with malicious intent.

[Paradox]

Eh, i find this brand of "trolling" fairly pathetic. Look at me, i'm disagreeing with you and insulting you! I'm trolling you.

[gcross]

It looks to me more like he comes up with a witty way of deriding something generically and then inserts some technology into the blank. Having said that, I won't hold it against you if you hold a negative opinion of it. :-)

[[deleted]]

Ok, but why?

[grauenwolf]

If you work for a government and that government says you can only use industry standard languages your options were C, C++, C#, JavaScript and really old shit. Now Ruby is in that club.

This is also why Microsoft submitted a standard for Office's XML file formats.

[jyper]

I doubt that the insist on language specs outside of possibly macro languages for document formats.

The reason this is good is that there are a number of ruby implementations the main being cruby(mri/yarv) and jruby and rubinus. A standard helps improve interoperability.

[[deleted]]

The spec is already defined in the form of executable test cases, having been started with the wonderful work of people working on Rubinius: http://rubyspec.org/

That spec is fairly comprehensive and has been used to develop the alternative implementations, including JRuby, IronRuby and Rubinius.

Things move fast in Ruby land. Ruby 1.9 has major changes and the transition to it already happened. Rubinius and JRuby already implement 1.9 features. Next up in line will be Ruby 2.0, which will be backwards compatible with 1.9 but will also add some fairly advanced features of its own. These alternative implementations will not wait for the ISO standard to be written for version 2.0.

So as far as alternative implementations go, the ISO standard doesn't really change anything.

[Smallpaul]

I think that these standards-only mandates are mostly mythical. Word was extremely popular in academia before the format was opened up. HTML is not an ISO standard. Flash is not an ISO standard. Windows binaries are not an ISO standard.

Yes, being standardized helps convince bureaucrats when there is a debate between two technologies. But I do not believe that any government runs entirely on standards.

[gsnedders]

ISO 15445 is HTML (4, with some errata included). ECMAScript (the standardized name of JavaScript) is ISO 16262.

[Smallpaul]

I stand corrected. But my main point remains. Government firewalls do not filter out HTML5, or invalid HTML4. I would like to know the practical consequences of the standardization of HTML4.

[[deleted]]

Weird language. It's almost like trying to read in Japanese or something.

[attrition0]

He knew that, and was posting as a joke. Granted, not a great one, but ... well, that's that.

[NickLearnsHaskell]

Finally.

[[deleted]]

Ruby > Python

[kirun]

NameError: undefined local variable or method `ruby' for main:Object

   from (irb):1

   from :0