So, you’ve heard of IronRuby? Microsoft’s implementation of Ruby on .NET. I’m hearing a bit of talk about it around the interwebs. Thinking of trying it out, eh?
Don’t. Ever.
Microsoft invented the technique we now refer to as Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. They tried it to Sun Java (MS JVM). They’ve tried it with Kerberos, and even today every web developer in the world is frustrated, wasting time trying to get around MS’s attempts to poison HTML and CSS.
A Leopard doesn’t change its spots. There is only one conceivable reason for Microsoft to implement another language on its own platform, and that’s that it sees it as a threat and wants to kill it. First, make a really good implementation! Fast, easy, Visual Studio! Next, “improve” it – on Windows only, of course! Third, we’re using MS Ruby++ and we’re fucked.
Run a million miles from IronRuby. If you assist in giving it traction, if you feed it any attention at all, you’re just making the world a worse place for all of us.
And one would be advised to think very, very carefully before adopting any technology – or, just as importantly, any *implementation* of a technology – that is not open source from top to bottom. GPL is best but MIT will do.
May MS never stain the history of computing again…