Suppose you want to do a very common task like parse some XML. In Clojure, the workflow is:
1. Go to Github or Clojars, find the latest version number of clojure.data.xml
2. Add this version number to your project.clj
3. Lein deps and restart the repl
4. Re-acquire whatever REPL data you had
1. import xml.{sax,dom,etree}
_domains_text = requests.get(API_URL + "/domainlist.xml").content
_domains_db = pyquery.PyQuery(_domains_text)
DOMAINS = [d.values()[0] for d in _domains_db('domain')] jQuery = pyquery.PyQuery(someHTMLDocumentString)
links = jQuery('a')
Tell me about it: http://lee-phillips.org/badruby/
That in itself would not be reasonable. But it seems as if Ruby's own libraries broke going from 1.8.1. -> 1.8.7. Regardless of the number of years involved, that's kind of unexpected. But I'm not familiar with the Ruby world, and maybe that change in version number is considered major.
The whole experience left me with reduced confidence in Ruby stuff and I still avoid it and programs that use it. The comments below by people who know more about the Ruby ecosystem than I do don't give me any reason to change.
The problem is that the various packaged versions of Ruby are a shambles. RVM has a number of significant problems and difficulties (rbenv is both better and worse).
Right now getting a good, modern Ruby version on a standard modern computer is a big pain in the ass.
As long as that stays true, we will be dinged for not supporting old (but common) versions.
Years from now, when everybody has good 1.9 compatibility, things may be better. At least, if 2.0 doesn't have the same problems...
So many of the language features have changed in ruby programmer will have to edit every file in her project, and upgrade every single dependency, just to get her application running on a new ruby interpreter. Add that to the culture of "let's use as much 3rd party code as possible!" and the library writers emulating the core developers and changing their APIs all the time ... the process of upgrading an interpreter converges on "rewrite the entire application"
Which is what we do. And some percentage of those rewrites are in languages that don't have this problem.
I've had the same experience before, but chiefly with Ruby.
Interestingly, my problems with this in both Python and Ruby have evaporated once I got in the habit of using virtualenv/rb-env/rvm for my development environment.
Python is about the cleanest/nicest experience I have in any language, for the record. Only language that comes close is Clojure.
Leiningen is...legendary.