Much of the criticism, I believe, comes from cultural rather than
technical concerns. Most of the movers-and-shakers in the Ruby
community are using either *nix or OS X and therefore most of the
blogs, articles, tutorials and books come written through that prism
(actually, earlier works were much better in this regard). This can
make it tricky for newcomers to learn Ruby if they're on Windows and
it cements a perception that Ruby on Windows is harder than it should
be, or doesn't work as well. Take the Rails Tutorial for example -
it's very POSIX centric and even advises using Cygwin rather than
native Windows. It's an awesome tutorial, but it would leave the
curious Windows-using dabbler with a sense that Rails, Ruby, Git and
the rest are really designed for Unix and unsatisfactory, hacky
afterthoughts on Windows. The result: people either switch, or turn
away. I know Rails !=3D Ruby, but many (perhaps most) newcomers are
introduced to Ruby through Rails, so I believe this is a good example.
The thing is, Ruby on Windows needn't be a poor experience - with the
right tools and advice, and good quality, disciplined cross-platform
programming on the part of Ruby developers, the beauty of Ruby can be
enjoyed just as well on Windows as it can on OS X or *nix. The Python
community seems to be ahead of Ruby on this point. I believe what we
need are more developers dedicated to improving the experience on
Windows (the RubyInstaller team being a fantastic example) and also a
more concious welcoming of Windows users into the community (as in,
less of the mocking of Windows and Windows users in general - yeah, I
know, boo-hoo, violins, etc. - but for a newcomer, it's not the best
experience to feel like you're some sort of pariah) Now, we all need
to have a sense of humour and have to be able to take a bit of
ribbing, but the joke is kind of old and stale now, and things have
improved tremendously in recent months on Windows, and, well, we're
all just trying to get some work done, no? Can't we all just be
friends, dammit? ;-) But if we can continue this trend of making
Windows feel less of a hostile environment for Ruby, then I'm sure
more Windows developers will be attracted and therefore will pour more
resources into improving Ruby on Windows. So, keep up the good work
and less of the negative stuff, in other words.
(btw, this particular community is actually very welcoming and always
has been; my mild critique is more aimed at the high-profile bloggers,
developers and pundits, particularly in the Rails community.)
Charles
