| The "Maintenance and greenfield concerns are very different" section is relevant to my interests: > The implications for a programming language are difficult to prove conclusively, but simple to explain: an ecosystem focused more on maintaining existing projects than creating new projects will be less attractive for new projects. Ruby/Rails provides an interesting example here. The ruby and rails community ecosystem (the author is right it's about "ecosystem" more than the language) -- has, in general, done it's best to focus as much as possible on innovation over stability. That is, has tried to choose focus on creating new projects over support for existing projects. Much to the frustration of some in the ruby ecosystem with existing projects to support. (Rails, of course, from one perspective is an existing project; from another is a framework, which has generally over it's history cared more about new projects that will be created with Rails than existing projects built on Rails that need to be supported). Of course, there still are existing projects, and there are still developers participating in the ecosystem who need to support those existing projects. So you can only go so far. What has this done for ruby/rails ecosystem? Hard to say. Overall it's been successful, but it still can't make the ecosystem as greenfield as a true greenfield ecosystem, which is perhaps why some are leaving ruby/rails for greener pastures -- more than any qualities of ruby as a language, it's just the opportunity to be in a greenfield ecosystem that is attractive, perhaps. |