Having worked exclusively with Ruby for the last 14 months, and comparing things to the situation with Java or Python libraries, I completely agree with this. Working with Ruby gems is often very frustrating. Core libraries like Rubygems, Bundler, Rake and even Rails often cause an application to break when they are upgraded. Minor upgrades regularly cause breakage, where that would be a rare exception with Java or Python libraries. Major upgrades usually cause breakage, where others would strive for backwards compatibility from the start and often succeed. All the benefits I perceive Ruby to have, all the time I gain by progamming in Ruby, I lose to unnecessary library issues. I'm at the point where I advise others to seriously reconsider their choice when they intend to do a new project in Ruby.
Your story has some errors which, when coupled with the hyperbolic exaggerations, make me believe your story is a fabrication. For example Rake wasn't updated for two years until the very recent 0.9, so that part is a lie.
You can recover some credibility if you can tell us specifically which minor upgrades caused breakage. You'll have to list a bunch of them in order to support the "regularly cause breakage" claim.
However I'm certain you won't be able to do that. Go troll somewhere else, please.
Yeah, that's the kind of attitude that has allowed this situation to persist for so long. Quibble about details when the bottom line is that I don't dare a minor upgrade of even the smallest gem for fear of having to spend a day on some wild goose chase. So perhaps Rake was never responsible for any of the breakage. I misremember or misattributed: so what? It doesn't matter, because I don't trust Rake either. You want examples of other breakages? Follow Some of the mailing listst and Google groups. Stuff breaks a zillion times more often than in the Java and Python communities.
