Reading this post/advert of a talk by MCB has me wondering whether Ruby will ever evolve into something greater than what it currently is.

It’s 2025 and Ruby still has same issues: speed, memory and CPU cycles. I get it: language design is hard, backwards compatibility is a concern etc. But if there’s a faster alternative language with a similar syntax(Crystal language) then does Ruby really have a promising future??

Ruby has come along way… but I would think so, yes, there’s almost always room for improvement no matter which language it is

Discourse runs on Ruby and Rails and it powers some pretty big forums

Re Crystal, I always thought it’d be cool for them to merge or join forces with Ruby, could be a natural next step for both of them…

Haha can’t disagree on this. If you don’t evolve, you die of “static shock”

I already know where this is going haha. “Pretty big forums” haha?

On the real though, maybe that’s why Ruby is the same. The cost of changing and evolving is greater than the benefit of going in a different direction and the powers that be have too much to lose from any major changes. Just a thought, I could be wrong though.

If I’m not wrong, when Crystal stated they listed compatibility with Ruby as being one of their goals. Then later on they changed and stated compatibility with Ruby wasn’t their goal.

I asked the late great Noah Gibbs about this and he stated that compatibility with Ruby wasn’t an easy goal to achieve. You’d have to follow the internals of Ruby to the letter and stay in line. So looking similar and not being compatible was an easier and practical goal as opposed to compatibility.

Sadly Crystal still hasn’t caught on. I think their website and resources have something to do with it. The docs are poor and not direct or practical, contrast that with Elixir and its docs are something else! You can literally learn the language from the website!

I’m keeping my eye on the next wave of language design, I don’t think we’ve peaked yet and it’s only a matter of time before someone shocks us with something incredible!