It has been five years since Ruby saw a major stable update, with Ruby 1.9 appearing in December 2007. But today, that streak is over with the release of Ruby 2.0.
As with any major language release, there are a number of new features. The language now supports keyword arguments that replace the argument hashing that used to appear throughout Ruby; an array literal, %i, has been introduced; and by default, Ruby's encoding is now UTF-8. A more comprehensive list of new features and examples is now also available.
On the debugging side, DTrace is now supported, or if you want to debug the "ruby-way", then TracePoint is available, too.
Documentation for the new release is improved, with 75 percent of the platform documented in rdoc, up from 60 percent in 1.9.3.
Five incompatibilities exist in Ruby 2.0 for 1.9 code, but it is noted that the switch from 1.9 to 2.0 should be easier than the 1.8 to 1.9 switch.
Tarballs can be downloaded from ruby-lang.org.
About Chris Duckett
Some would say that it is a long way from software engineering to journalism, others would correctly argue that it is a mere 10 metres according to the floor plan.During his first five years with CBS Interactive, Chris started his journalistic advent...
Full Bio
Some would say that it is a long way from software engineering to journalism, others would correctly argue that it is a mere 10 metres according to the floor plan.During his first five years with CBS Interactive, Chris started his journalistic adventure in 2006 as the Editor of Builder AU after originally joining the company as a programmer.Leaving CBS Interactive in 2010 to follow his deep desire to study the snowdrifts and culinary delights of Canada, Chris based himself in Vancouver and paid for his new snowboarding and poutine cravings as a programmer for a lifestyle gaming startup.Chris returns to CBS in 2011 as the Editor of TechRepublic Australia determined to meld together his programming and journalistic tendencies once and for all.In his free time, Chris is often seen yelling at different operating systems for their own unique failures, avoiding the dreaded tech support calls from relatives, and conducting extensive studies of internets — he claims he once read an entire one.
