Dynamic Languages, Microsoft, and me
I’ve decided to stage a friendly takeover of Microsoft. As of January, 2007 my new work address will be Building 42 at Microsoft. I’ll be working in the CLR team to help bring the love of dynamic languages out to the statically typed heathens :)
This all started back in August when I was dragged into various back rooms at OSCON and Lang.Net and presented with an offer that I could not refuse. At some point in your life, you realize that you have an opportunity to affect some real change in the world. RubyCLR was one way to affect that change, and thanks to the gracious support of my partners Barry Gervin, Dave Lloyd, and Bruce Johnson over at ObjectSharp, I was able to give folks a glimpse of what is possible. Thank you all for your generosity and your friendship.
However, my platform and reach at ObjectSharp is limited. We’re a consulting company and while we do use Ruby to deliver value to our customers, it’s literally one developer at a time (hi Andrew!) It’s a whole other thing to work at a platform company whose reach extends out to millions of developers. That’s a remarkable opportunity, and a unique privilege.
This is why I’m uprooting my family and moving all the way across the continent and to a different country. The timing is right since our kids are young enough that they won’t even notice (I was the same age as Matthew when I moved to Canada from Hong Kong). A big public thank-you to my wife, Carolyn, who has supported me since day one. I love you.
So, now begins the next phase of my life. I know that some of you have questions, but I’m somewhat limited in what I can say about what comes next. I hope you can understand if my answers are somewhat evasive or vague. I merely ask for your patience as all will become apparent in due time. It really will. I wouldn’t have put my family on a one-way flight to Seattle if that weren’t the case …
What’s going to happen to RubyCLR? It’s in reasonably good shape now, and I’m actively looking for people to help drive that project. There is still a couple of months before I start at Microsoft, so please contact me if you’re interested in helping out. The source code is released under the MIT license, so you are free to do with it as you wish if you don’t like the direction the project is taking.
What am I going to do once I get to Microsoft? This is the part where I’m going to have to be evasive and vague. I can tell you what I’m not going to be doing: I’m not going to stop blogging, I’m not going to leave the Ruby community, and I’m not going to do evil things. I see my mission at Microsoft as helping to make developers happier; to give them tools that make programming fun. That’s why I program-I enjoy programming. I like to use tools that put a smile on my face. Perhaps what I’ll be making at Microsoft will put a smile on your face too. Just be patient …
If you’re at RubyConf this weekend and you’d like to talk in person about my move, make sure you come over to say hi. I’m the guy with the giant camera in the front row.
Wow, John, congrats. Microsoft needs guys like you. Like, really badly. Best of luck to you and yours as you begin your new adventure.
Posted by: Brian Eng | October 20, 2006 at 01:17 PM
Congratulations. All the luck in taking over building 42 and then Microsoft. :)
Posted by: Omer van Kloeten | October 20, 2006 at 01:35 PM
Sounds pretty cool John, and you obviously seem happy about the choice. Wish you all the best and have a lot of fun on your new job!
Posted by: Tomas Restrepo | October 20, 2006 at 02:06 PM
Congratulations John, and all the best with your endeavours at Microsoft! Sounds like a great opportunity.
And I'd be happy to help out with RubyCLR if you'd like, I think it's a great project, and Ruby/.Net integration is something I'm really interested in. Why can't I have the best of both worlds? ;-)
-= El =-
Posted by: El Draper | October 20, 2006 at 02:20 PM
Congrats John and good luck!
I'm hoping your duties at MS include creating a Ruby compiler for .NET, similar to IronPython. I know that there a few projects out there in the wild, but it doesn't seem like they are making any progress. I feel that without an internal Microsoft project, we won't be seeing such a compiler for quite some time. And if you're not going to be doing that, I hope you'd suggest to the "higher ups" that they should be doing this anyway.
Posted by: Lion | October 20, 2006 at 02:39 PM
Congrats! Your work is sincerely appreciated. I'm especially excited to hear about whatever new Rubyish project (hopefully) you work on when the time comes!
Posted by: Sam Smoot | October 20, 2006 at 03:02 PM
Congrats! Great to have you in bld42! I am looking forward to seeing you around!
Posted by: Brad Abrams | October 20, 2006 at 04:11 PM
Welcome and congrats!
You'll love it here.
Posted by: Bertrand | October 20, 2006 at 04:15 PM
Ah yes, we now have one of ours on the inside. Commence phase 2!!! MUAHAHAHA!
Good work John and congratulations!
Posted by: Haacked | October 20, 2006 at 05:39 PM
You missed one thing, though. C#, VB, C++ -- they're not based in building 42... ;)
Posted by: kfarmer | October 20, 2006 at 06:50 PM
Congrats John!
Posted by: Dave Donaldson | October 20, 2006 at 07:40 PM
Congratulations John,
Sounds like you are making a great move and I wish you all the best in the coming adventure. As a fellow Rubyist I certainly hope you will continue to be very active in the community as you have lots of offer. You will be working in teh same building as a friend of mine!
Cheers.
Posted by: Chris Large | October 20, 2006 at 08:34 PM
Wow! Congrats!
Posted by: Sam Gentile | October 20, 2006 at 09:26 PM
Congratulations! Good luck with the dynamic languages work you'll pound away at Microsoft.
If another Lang.NET occurs, I'll see you there!
Posted by: Scott Robinson | October 21, 2006 at 02:22 AM
I'm extremely curious to see if you end up working with Jim Huginin (?), the guy behind IronPython. I would love to help with rubyclr, time permitting. I may never get a job doing Ruby, so my best hope is that C# 4.0 and its corresponding framework support Python and Ruby directly.
Posted by: Kevin Williams | October 21, 2006 at 05:19 AM
Awesome! Welcome aboard John!
Posted by: Sajee | October 21, 2006 at 07:46 AM
well done Peter!
Posted by: Drew | October 21, 2006 at 08:45 AM
Congrats!
Posted by: John Bristowe | October 21, 2006 at 08:47 AM
My congratulations are in order as well. But I was curious: how's the Macbook going to fit in over in Building 42?
Posted by: Ant Like Worker | October 21, 2006 at 09:17 AM
Congrats John! I'm sure you'll take over your part of the world and have a lot of fun while you do.
Posted by: Bil Simser | October 21, 2006 at 09:32 AM
Congratulations John!
Wish you good luck!
My name is Miguel, and I endorse this message.
Posted by: Miguel de Icaza | October 21, 2006 at 11:54 AM
Ha! I already told you this would happen [way back in february](http://www.peterkrantz.com/2006/using-ruby-as-a-net-language/)!
Posted by: Peter Krantz | October 21, 2006 at 12:05 PM
Oh, and congratulations!
Posted by: Peter Krantz | October 21, 2006 at 12:06 PM
Congratulations
Posted by: Darshan | October 21, 2006 at 01:14 PM
Congrats!
Posted by: Dr Nic | October 21, 2006 at 01:26 PM
Sounds exciting ^_^ Congratulations!
Posted by: Koistya `Navin | October 21, 2006 at 02:35 PM
Congratulations John! A surprise, but then again, not a surprise at all!
Posted by: Robert Hurlbut | October 21, 2006 at 07:19 PM
Congratulations! Make sure you join the Canucks at Microsoft alias, it definitely brings a unique perspective to the job ;)
Posted by: Jeff | October 21, 2006 at 11:20 PM
Really great work! Congratulations!
Posted by: Pościel Wełniana | October 22, 2006 at 01:14 AM
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Posted by: Prakash | October 22, 2006 at 06:56 AM
Congratulations, John.
You know that I wish you (and yours) much success and happiness. May this new journey take you exactly where you want to go.
Vera
Posted by: Vera Bass | October 22, 2006 at 09:04 AM
Well, just another brain bought by Microsoft money.
Posted by: IAmSad | October 22, 2006 at 12:59 PM
If you dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change.
But, you change.
Posted by: IAmSad | October 22, 2006 at 01:01 PM
top work!
The company just got smarter.
best of luck
lb
Posted by: lb | October 22, 2006 at 03:58 PM
in http://www.rubyclr.com/ you have a picture that compares C# vs Ruby...
Made me laugh... hard... how about such C# piece of code:
public class Person {public string name, birthday, children;}
Oh.. wait...! now we have 1 line of C# and 1 line of Ruby! Panic, panic! :-)
Posted by: ttt | October 22, 2006 at 11:19 PM
Congratulations.
I'm glad, a company like Microsoft recognized your work.
I hope, you'll be able to accomplish great things.
Good luck to you and your family
Posted by: Alain Sarti | October 23, 2006 at 01:51 AM
Congrats, man. Can't wait to see you here in 42.
oh, ttt, your c# now doesn't do the same thing as the Ruby code does.
Posted by: marklio | October 23, 2006 at 08:50 AM
Marklio, I heard C# team is going to introduce type 'variant' (which is evil in my eyes)
BTW - I'm not knowledgable in Ruby... so, feel free to explain - what's the difference. I'd be glad to learn. Thnx.
Posted by: ttt | October 23, 2006 at 10:36 AM
Obviously I've been spending too much time studying for midterms when I should've been paying attention to this blog.
Microsoft? I don't know what to say... except that I hope you got in under the appropriate terms (you get payed 1 bajillion dollars).
Posted by: Josh | October 23, 2006 at 12:24 PM
Congrats John! Hope the work you did for with us at the Qube had some small part in all this.
Posted by: Kenley | October 23, 2006 at 01:32 PM
Congratulations, your RubyCLR speech inspired me to boot up windows. I wish you the best.
Posted by: bryanl | October 24, 2006 at 06:33 AM
Welcome! I'm across the street from you in 41. Now I have someone else that can wax nostalgic with me about COM and Delphi. :)
Posted by: Steve Teixeira | October 24, 2006 at 04:20 PM
This could hardly be more perfect, especially being in building 42. (Oddly there seem to be exactly 42 comments as I write this... I guess I'm spoiling it: sorry!)
I have a potential client that needs an application which I want to build in Rails, but they are drinking the M$ Kool-aid... so perhaps if I'm forced to write it for .NET I can in the very least use Ruby.
Sorry if this is a really dumb question, but wouldn't it be possible to port Rails pretty much in its entirety--or at least large parts of it--to .NET, so that you could build an app that (from the customer's point of view) is a .NET app, but really (from the developer's point of view) is a Rails app?
Posted by: Brandon Z | October 25, 2006 at 08:13 AM
Congrats, John! Looking forward to seeing what sort of trouble you can get yourself into on the inside. ;>
Posted by: Danny Thorpe | October 25, 2006 at 09:18 AM
Sorry about the batch response ... time is limited these days :)
Kevin Williams - yes, Jim is on the same team as me.
kfarmer - gotta keep those statically typed guys across the street :)
Ant Like Worker - I've put in my hardware requisition for a MacBook Pro. AFAIK it's totally cool to run a MacBook Pro.
Kenley - everything started back at the Qube when I wrote your deployment system in Ruby. Hopefully it's still serving y'all well.
Steve - it will be fun to talk about COM and Delphi! If only we could get Bruneau to come back to MS ...
Brandon Z - the JRuby guys already have Rails running today, and with native OS threads. This means that a Java customer could look at a Rails app running on JRuby as a "Java app" ...
Posted by: John Lam | October 25, 2006 at 09:34 AM
John: I *just* read about JRails (in the transcript from Charles Nutter's talk on Second Life about JRuby) between my last comment and this one... is that your way of saying "yes you can do that with RubyCLR but you'll need to spend lots of time and be as smart as they are to get it working"?
(P.S. to my last comment: I should add that I'm pretty much assuming that what you'll do at Microsoft will be along the same lines as RubyCLR, and that you'll be furthering the same ends, even if you're not actively continuing the RubyCLR project.)
Posted by: Brandon Z | October 25, 2006 at 10:08 AM
Congratulations John! Best of luck with Microsoft and wishing you and your family well with the move. Microsoft is lucky to have you!
Posted by: James Sheppard | October 26, 2006 at 03:15 AM
Congratulations! You will be eating your lunch at building 43 as well. They serve good food there. :o)
Posted by: Lars-Inge Tønnessen (MVP) | November 03, 2006 at 04:18 PM
Congratulations!
Waiting to add anything that comes up from you to my library of tools in order to ease life for our Customers!
Congratulations, once again!
Posted by: ADEBISI Foluso A. (C#.Net Dev. Sql Server & MySQL DBA) | December 01, 2006 at 03:05 PM
Super Congratulations John !
Posted by: Gunnar | January 19, 2007 at 09:46 AM