So what’s the big deal with these metallic names anyhow? I’d like to think that Microsoft chose the name
IronRuby as a homage to
Ruby In Steel. After all, forms an essential part of Steel, but Steel is stronger - yes, I like the sound of that...! ;-)
A .NET Ruby compiler would certainly be a nice addition to have in our Visual Studio Ruby IDE - though, fear not, we have no plans to forsake the standard Ruby interpreter and/or virtual machine. In other words, Ruby In Steel will continue to support cross-platform Ruby and Rails development. The option of compiling to the CLR would make a useful additional feature but, when IronRuby finally appears, it is not our intention to concentrate on .NET development to the exclusion of all else.
But back to that name.... The truth is we can’t claim that Ruby In Steel inspired the IronRuby name. It is, in fact, named after the .NET version of Python, IronPython. The Python language is named after the old British comedy, Monty Python’s Flying Circus (trivia note: the original name for Monty Python’s Flying Circus was Owl Stretching Time - it was changed before the show went on air. But for that, I guess Python would have been called Owl or, possibly, Stretching...?). Ruby was apparently named just because its author. Matz, liked the sound of it (maybe with a sidelong reference to the Perl language too).
But I honestly have no idea where the Iron comes into the picture... (I think it reasonable to surmise that it may have been chosen by somebody with no knowledge of Cockney Rhyming Slang).
IronRuby was also the name of an independent .NET Ruby project which was the brainchild of Wilco Bauwer. This project has been rather slow in it development, however, and I have no real idea whether it is still alive.
I’ve explained previously how we latched upon the name, Steel, and British TV is once again to blame. I confess that I am still in the dark about the relevance of Iron. If anyone knows why IronPython and IronRuby are so called, I’d love to know...
Add to del.icio.us