The latest SDTimes magazine has published two editorials with negative reviews of the Ruby language

The first is negative, and the second one is not positive either..

Main complains are: long learning curve, slow execution and lack of tools.

I do not have experience with Ruby yet, but at least two out of these three cons would stop me from using any programming language. Long learning curve is no big deal. I can live with memorizing cryptic looking commands and operators: I still can not memorize all shortcut keys and commands of infamous vi editor, which does not stop me from using it – Google helps when needed.

But the other two are biggies: slowness and lack of tools. Programmers are spoiled these days by fast run-times, just-in-time compilers, and the like. Programmers are spoiled by excellent IDEs, debugger, progiles, test and reporting tools, etc. To put it simple… just give me a second to make the font larger

We need the full stack. That ‘s it. Period. Basta.

My primary language of choice is Java with abundance of everything. I need a really really good reason to switch. The fact that one language has an xyz element while another do not, is not a good reason to switch. We need a comfortable environments. Who can offer you this? Open source community? Yeah, right…see you in five years. It ‘s gotta be a commercial software company with a well oiled marketing machine. Otherwise expect the fate of Lisp or SmallTalk. Just having a group of loud enthusiasts does not cut it.

But Ruby has a chance, namely JRuby if Sun Microsystems will start pushing it. They ‘ve hired two lead JRuby developers , which may be a lot more important event for Ruby that existence of RoR and its followers. Let ‘s wait and see.