Should Trimble Buy More Plugins?

[Trogluddite]

@tim said:

Whilst it may well be true that Ruby is slow...

Which leads to another point - OK, so Ruby will never beat compiled 'C', BUT why are we still stuck with Ruby 1.8.x?
I use 1.9.3 on a regular basis, which has a whole new byte-code interpreter (YARV), which truly is much faster - operations can take as little as 25% of the time of 1.8.6.
And far more of the Ruby standard libraries are 'C' coded too, rather than being native Ruby files.
The only objection I can see to upgrading Ruby, is that there are certain syntax changes etc. that would involve developers having to make minor alterations to their code.

What better time to do this than at the release of the new 'Extensions Warehouse'? Many developers will have to tweak their code anyway to meet the new guidelines, and a system is in place to, at least in some small way QC the code before admission.

This seems like yet another missed opportunity.
I personally rather like the way that plugin dev's currently are independent, so prefer to see the EW as a way for dev's to monetize their hard work - they would surely lose some ability to be so innovative if they were 'bought out' by a large corporation like Trimble (which has yet to show any sign of real 'innovation').
If the EW is so important to Trimble, what better way to show their commitment than to say to the dev's "hey, we just made all your plugins four times faster, and we'll help you to adapt your code to the changes".
The lack of this makes me suspect that in the long-run, the EW won't be used to benefit independent developers very much at all - rather, it will be used by Trimble to promote their own 'C' extensions, and charge users extra for features that should be incoprporated into the main program.
That might be OK if the building blocks of a "roll your own" system were cheap enough, but the hike in licence costs, for so little benefit, of this release does not bode well for that model.

It also raises the possibility that the EW could be to the detriment of small developers - Trimble now have a way to easily track which plugins are most popular. This makes it very easy for them to pull the rug out from under a successful plugin by implementing their own version. I mean no disrespect to the amazing work done by the Ruby dev's here - but the guys who sign my purchase orders at work are much more easily convinced to spend cash on 'official' software than something they might perceive as 'amateur' ("What? PayPal, you must be kidding!")

My own Ruby efforts are meagre compared to the likes of ThomThom, Fredo, TIG etc. - but even if I though they were good enough to monetize in some way, I would stick with our own Plugin Store - because I know that the guys who run this place really do have the best interests of the user base at heart.

[thomthom]

@aerilius said:

I try already to write for Ruby 2.0, and use rather fallbacks for 1.8.6-specific things.

You where writing a SketchUp shim, right? Are you able to use that to test compatibility? Test if a file will load etc - see if there are syntax error.

[Aerilius]

I haven't written something like that. So far I only take care and add switches for the differences ( String.[], methods["method_name"] || methods[:method_name], …)