"could it be Sun loves Ruby because it needs lots of their servers to scale?"

http://jim.roepcke.com/2008/04/18#item7881

by foemmel • 18 years ago

12 5 18 years ago

jim.roepcke.com

andr• 18 years ago

No.

1) The marketing reason is pretty simple. If Sun does a lot for Ruby, they will win points with Ruby users, so when the time comes to choose an OS or buy servers, Sun would be higher on the list.

2) Every big corporation likes to have it's own technology. IBM is doing more for Java than Sun is, Microsoft has .NET, so Sun can back Ruby and it doesn't cost them much, since most of the work is already done.

3) The 15-20x number was off the cuff. I'm no expert, but it seems like the perceived Ruby slowness actually comes from Rails.

freax• 18 years ago

Ruby was really slow prior to the latest version. It made Python look fast. It wasn't just Rails.

zach• 18 years ago

Someone call Sun and tell them to stop sponsoring Rubinius work sessions, then. They wouldn't want Ruby to run too fast.

henning• 18 years ago

They're also sponsoring JRuby, which at the moment is often even slower than MRI.

donw• 18 years ago

I wasn't aware that Ruby could only run on a Sun machine. It's probably more likely that Sun is sponsoring Ruby for two reasons; one, because Ruby is a hot new technology at the moment, and thus has a lot of visibility; and two, because Sun needs a 'next-generation' platform now that Java is mainstream.

"could it be Sun loves Ruby because it needs lots of their servers to scale?"

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