Something should happen with a programming language to bring it to life. For example, Jesse James Garrett came out with an acronym AJAX, and JavaScript became popular. David Heinemeier Hansson created Ruby on Rails and Ruby became a household name. ( On a side note…I’m wondering, should I also increase the length of my name to come up with something valuable? Something like Yakov Edson Arantes Do Nascimento Fain? Hmm… not too bad).

I do not know, use, or have an opinion on the Ruby language yet. Aggressive Ruby on Rails marketing did not impress me that much. But now this language climbed up to the 13th place in the Tiobe index hence it deserves to be taken seriously. Why this 13-year old language was not known in the programming community until the Ruby on Rails came about? Why did it take 13 years to rich a respectful 13 place? Can we de-rail Ruby and still use it ?

Bruce Tate is a well know proponent of Ruby. While some people are quick to blame any Java developer who is looking into other languages,in my opinion it’s an attitude of weak people. If we want Java to evolve, we need to look around. I “ve asked Bruce several questions about Ruby, and this is our blitz-interview.

Here’s is another podcast where Bruce Tate talks about Ruby at The Server Side symposium at Barcelona.