IronRuby Manager Leaves Microsoft

Possibly off-topic.<p><i>"However, a year ago the team shrunk by half and our agility was severely limited. I’m omitting the internal reasons for this, as they are the typical big-company middle-management issues every software developer has."</i><p>This is one of the things that can happen to you when you work at Microsoft. You can start thinking that the terrible work problems you face are both "typical big-company...issues" and problems that "every developer" has to face.<p>First, many of these issues, and especially their particular flavor, are not general to the business. Second, not every developer works for a big company. You have to get out and work elsewhere for a while to see this.<p>There's a minimsft.blogspot.com, but is there an equivalent for Apple? For Google? If so, are they as well known? Do they draw knowledgeable commenters from within the ranks of the host/target company?<p>There are many better places to work than Microsoft. The place seemed truly pathological to me.

I am heartbroken to hear this. .Net, the Dynamic Language Runtime, IronPython and IronRuby are incredibly awesome technologies and if instead of embracing the cool aspects, Microsoft will focus only on the boring enterprisey bits in the future I'll have no choice but stop being a .Net developer and switch to something else. Which would be a shame because I really like those technologies.

There's a big opportunity for the taking here for the right person with both .Net and Ruby experience and enough time on their hands. IronRuby might be a minor Ruby implementation but I suspect if it stays alive it could be a bigger deal in the .Net world and there could be a great consultancy business off the back of it, especially in skunkworks-type situations.

I read this on the weekend just before I wanted to adopt IronPython into our company. It was supposed to make C# obsolete.<p>Well.. what can I say. It sucks to use any M$ tech. I should stick to OSX and Linux and leave my current employer due to strict use of M$ tech.<p>Sorry to say that man, but your story reads just like that to me.<p>I want to thank you for your great work, though. And I wish you all the best for your NY future(;

Interesting that he's going to a financial technology consulting firm whose products include algorithmic trading. It seems like that would be one of the last spaces to be interested in a dynamic scripting language versus pure speed.

I had the good fortune to actually spend some time geeking out with Jimmy on campus. Great guy, and he will be missed. If you are in NYC, reach out to him. He's a geek worth knowing.

Another straw for the camel's back. It's not far off breaking now, friends have been tempting me with offers to return to my roots - Ruby/Linux. Fuck Microsoft.

Probably not that big of a deal if they stop supporting IronRuby. What's the point anyhow? Ruby is most popular because of RoR and Microsoft already has an MVC framework that works just fine. There was some very limited effort to port ASP.NET MVC to IronRuby, but it looked dead in the water to me. Plus, I hear straight up Ruby has built-in bindings for Windows, so IronRuby isn't necessary for scripting either.

Pity, he doesn't sound so enthused about the future.