Keynote: Ruby 2.0

Yukihiro Matsumoto

Keynote: Ruby 2.0

Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto

@matz

#ruby

#ruby-2-0

#programming-language-design

Keynote: Ruby 2.0

by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto

The keynote presentation at MountainWest RubyConf 2013, delivered by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, focuses on the introduction and significance of Ruby 2.0, highlighting the evolution of the Ruby programming language and its community. Matz begins by acknowledging the local Ruby community and expresses gratitude for the conference hospitality. He shares a personal anecdote about technical difficulties he faced with his devices, which sets a relatable tone for the audience.

Key Points Discussed:

Transition to Ruby 2.0: Matz emphasizes the importance of upgrading from Ruby 1.8, which will soon be obsolete. He encourages attendees to adopt Ruby 2.0 due to its improved features and stability.
Historical Context of Ruby Versions: He discusses the journey of Ruby's development, touching on significant challenges faced during previous releases (like 1.0 and 1.9), including compatibility issues and community backlash.
Celebration of Ruby 2.0: Matz proudly refers to Ruby 2.0 as the "happiest release ever," noting the positive reception it has received and its performance improvements over Ruby 1.9.
Key Features of Ruby 2.0:
- Method Combinations: Introduction of module prepends to enhance method organization and avoid naming conflicts.
- Refinements in Monkey Patching: Enhancements to how developers can address unscoped modifications within Ruby code, ensuring more predictable behavior.
- Keyword Arguments: This feature allows for named parameters in method calls, streamlining code and eliminating the need for manual hash unpacking.
- Lazy Evaluation Methods: Implementation of lazy methods inspired by functional programming, which optimizes performance by deferring computations.
- String and Encoding Improvements: Ruby 2.0 simplifies handling of strings with better support for Unicode, treating strings with improved encoding intelligence.
Ruby's Community Engagement: Matz highlights the flourishing Ruby community that continues to grow through events and conferences, showcasing ongoing developer support.

Conclusion and Takeaways:

Matz concludes by reaffirming that Ruby 2.0 is a testament to the commitment to user experience, development efficiency, and community collaboration. He encourages developers to transition to Ruby 2.0, stating that it represents a significant milestone in Ruby's evolution. Looking ahead, Matz hints at Ruby 2.1 being released soon, indicating a dedication to continuous improvement and responsiveness to developer needs. In summary, Ruby 2.0 signifies not just a software release, but a culmination of years of development, community support, and a bright future for Ruby programming.

00:00:19.699 Welcome to the MountainWest RubyConf 2013 keynote. It's great to be here. One of the good things about this conference is the MountainWest community. I find it interesting that many of you are also members of this community. As a Matz, someone from Japan, I find it peculiar to see so many familiar faces here since Japan has very few people in the Ruby community that look like me. However, I appreciate the hospitality at this conference and I would like to acknowledge Mike Moore for his efforts.

00:01:17.189 On the downside, I've been having issues with my Galaxy Note 2. This morning, it broke and strangely, my micro SD card died at the beginning of this journey, taking all my backups with it. Even shortly after that, my phone experienced issues as well, prompting me to buy a new one. My previous phone, the Galaxy Nexus, lasted just six months, and now it seems that the Galaxy Note 2 shared the same fate. It's a shame, but on the brighter side, I hope this keynote will be well received despite the challenges I've faced.

00:02:29.850 I want to start by informing you that Ruby 1.8 will die soon, so I encourage everyone to move to Ruby 2.0 right now. Over the years, we have released several versions of Ruby, starting with version 0.95. While some of those releases were well-received, others had significant issues. For example, the 1.8.7 release faced criticism due to a method named 'symbol to proc' that conflicted with the one defined in ActiveRecord, which caused problems in Ruby on Rails. Many community members boycotted it as a result.

00:03:09.310 Another release that caused issues was 1.0, which introduced severe incompatibilities with the transition from 1.8 to 1.9. We introduced a new virtual machine, known as Nick, along with multilingual support that can handle almost every character encoding globally. This was a significant advantage because other languages required conversions to Unicode for processing any strings. While this was a beneficial shift, the changes also introduced some incompatibilities, and it took five years for the community to fully adopt Ruby 1.9. Now, Ruby 2.0 has been released, and I am excited to share information about its features.

00:04:40.810 I can proudly declare Ruby 2.0 as the happiest release ever! There has been virtually no criticism regarding Ruby 2.0 since its launch. I recently attended a conference hosted by Heroku, where everyone celebrated Ruby 2.0 and its significance on the 20th anniversary of the Ruby language. Therefore, I am pleased to announce Ruby 2.0 as the happiest release ever; it is faster and more stable than Ruby 1.9, and we have strived for maximum compatibility, despite minor incompatibilities that arose from necessary bug fixes.

00:05:58.259 I have been developing Ruby since February 2014, which was 20 years ago. It was crucial to choose a significant date for naming the language, marking its inception. Two years later, on December 21, 1995, I released Ruby to the public, beginning its journey on the internet with version 0.95. Ruby version 1.0 was released in December 1996, followed by several milestones in release numbers in subsequent months and years. During those initial years, we also established a numbering system to signify stable and development versions, which helped manage version tracking effectively.

00:08:40.050 Over the years, we continued to release version updates regularly, aiming to improve performance and user experience. However, we recognized that the versioning system had become a limiting resource. We decided to utilize single-digit versions for clarity. Yet we faced the occasional conflict in version naming as developers sought to introduce features while adhering to a structured numbering system. This led to notable discussions and conflicts about versioning among the community stakeholders.

00:11:01.190 Finally, we reached Ruby 2.0, marking a momentous occasion. This year's celebration not only reflects an anniversary but the maturity of the language itself. Ruby has grown to embrace the Agile philosophy, supporting events, conferences, and meetups to foster the development and community growth around the language. We continue to see a vast number of new conferences, meetups and events supported by our active Rubyists.

00:12:14.560 To provide further insights into Ruby 2.0, I revisited my old documentation and slides, finding references that highlight its evolution. The earliest mention of Ruby occurred during the Ruby Conference in 2001. At that time, the Ruby community faced challenges following significant events of that year. Despite these hurdles, the language continued to thrive. At that conference, I discussed new virtual machine proposals and improvements to Ruby's garbage collection strategy aimed at enhancing performance.

00:14:02.250 Many technical discussions centered around optimizing memory management and garbage collection in Ruby, ensuring efficient memory usage as development continued. We focused on enhancing object allocation within the language and aimed to maintain Ruby's performance goals. By the time we reached Ruby 2.0, these enhancements were realized, significantly improving overall performance.

00:15:13.170 Next, I want to highlight a method that greatly impacted our development process: method combinations. We've placed a strong emphasis on enhancing our code by integrating features like module prepends, which allows for cleaner method combinations, thereby simplifying modifications. This helps avoid overlap in method names across various modules—reducing conflict while promoting enhanced organization of code. We have worked diligently to simplify the complexity in these interactions for Ruby developers.

00:16:28.920 Additionally, we've introduced refinements and improvements that optimize how Ruby handles monkey patching. Patching is a popular technique in Ruby; however, we acknowledge the complications that arise from unscoped modifications to core classes and methods. As a solution, refinements allow developers to scope their modifications within certain contexts, thus minimizing unexpected behaviors in Ruby code.

00:18:40.580 One feature that has generated significant interest is the introduction of keyword arguments in Ruby 2.0, allowing for named, optional parameters, enhancing readability and flexibility in method invocation. By supporting keyword arguments, developers no longer need to unpack hashes manually to pass parameters to methods—leading to cleaner and more intuitive code. This is a welcome addition for many developers who already experience the benefits of this method in Rails applications.

00:20:19.900 Moving on to further enhancements, I've presented the powerful addition of lazy evaluation methods inspired by functional programming languages. This feature encourages developers to explore different evaluation strategies leading to optimized performance. By integrating real laziness into our enumerable methods, we help prevent the exhaustion of system resources due to unnecessary computations.

00:22:05.890 I also want to emphasize the improvements in string and encoding handling, capitalizing on the growth of the Unicode standard. We're now able to treat strings from an encoding perspective more intelligently, thereby simplifying the interactions with data across diverse encoding formats. The transition is seamless; developers can now expect UTF-8 as the default, aligning with modern standards for web applications.

00:23:50.720 In conclusion, Ruby 2.0 is not just a release; it's a symbol of our ongoing commitment to development, user experience, and community engagement. We aim to remain efficient, modern and continue offering updated features that signify our dedication to the Ruby programming language. As we progress, I anticipate Ruby 2.1 will be released during this upcoming Christmas season, and we're committed to providing even more frequent updates to keep pace with developer needs.

00:25:34.660 Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm for Ruby. I am excited about where the language is heading, the features we’re introducing, and the vibrant communities we foster. Please make the switch to Ruby 2.0 as it represents the best of what we've achieved so far.

MountainWest RubyConf 2013