I am still overwhelmed with excitement about the big news that John Lam, creator of RubyCLR has accepted a full time job with Microsoft. John’s blog has the details here.
MS had already jumped into dynamic languages with the acquisition of IronPython. Now it only a matter of time until “Ruby#” or whatever MS will call it (since there is already a Ruby.NET project, which is heading in yet another direction). *nix purists and MS haters may be cringing, but I think it quite legitimizes the Ruby meme to naysayers who may have thought Ruby was just a fad.
Working in the big corporate space, one of the primary objections that I have encountered to implementing systems written in the Ruby language, is needing to run on Windows and use existing complex .NET services that are already deployed in the enterprise. A Ruby coming from Microsoft, on top of a Ruby coming from Sun (JRuby), just sends a clear message to corporate types that “This Ruby thing is real”. Heh. Heh heh, even.
Many of us have been trying to get Ruby taken seriously for a while, and this is exactly the kind of ammo that dead programmers need to not just sneak Ruby in, but storm the castle walls! Ruby will rule!
