Item — HN Reader

Sure upgrading to Ruby 1.9.x is a hassle (character encodings, changes to array class, etc. does break some old code). That said, 1.9 gives a good performance boost that Ruby needs, so man up and just do it.

It is also a "public good" issue: the sooner everyone up-converts to 1.9, the easier it will be to develop with Ruby because all required gems will work, etc. I have whined quite a bit on up convert hassles on rubyplanet.net, so I do understand the author's pain + complaints, but we do all need to move forward.

1 comments

The sooner? ruby 1.9 is around for more than a year??? now. 1.8 is still the standard in ubuntu and about everywhere else.

With respect to performance boost: Startup time didn't improve. And IIRC the same is true for certain string operations. Both are important in the field where ruby originated and where I personally still find it most useful -- scripting or rather as perl-replacement.

We use ruby at Spiceworks and are internally switching to 1.9.1. We are doing it for performance as well as internationalisation. While the encoding was an issue upfront (and we have guys converting our app from 1.8.6 as their primary focus), we do the edge-UTF8 approach, and we've updated a lot of the gems to 1.9 without waiting for others.

Get back to work, Scottie.