rubydoes.net

One of the things I love about July is that the huge void in anything actually happening in the NFL leads to all kinds of crazy predictions. The Superbowl winner will be [insert name of safest bet possible or most outrageous pick]. The top fantasty player will be [again, insert name of the obvious safe prediction or some wild guess]. Both professional and amateur (the guys at work) pundits alike participate in this frenzy to stave off boredom.

Of course such predictions rarely come true, and if they did it was pure coincidence not any particular insight on the part of the predictor.

That’s why I take this prediction that IronRuby won’t succeed as a full implementation able to run Rails with a huge grain of salt. However, the post is a great read if you’re sure to read the comments.

I was ready to post my own rebuttal of several of the claims, but the commenters did a great job of beating me to it. The one claim comment I definitely have to take issue with is the claim that MS will sabotage the IronRuby effort to prevent a Rails implementation as a defense of ASP.NET. This is ridiculous. As one commenter pointed out, if MS can get Rails enthusiasts to host their applications on IIS/Windows that’s a win for them. But it also ignores a more basic fact - that ASP.NET was designed with extensibility in mind. A Rails implementation on IronRuby would do no more to undercut WebForms than other efforts such as MonoRail or other efforts to bring MVP to ASP.NET.

Choices are good for the developers and their customers and good for MS. And as for any predictions, well, as much as it’s fun to discuss such things, I think I’ll wait at least until the season starts.

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