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Microsoft Ruby?
Yes, there really is one. Or, anyway, there used to be…

27 July 2006

by Huw Collingbourne

Way back in the 1980s, Microsoft embarked upon a Ruby project. This was to be a user-friendly programming language which even had its own point-and-click visual-programming user interface.

These days the language known as Ruby has no such visual programming tools as standard (though a few can be bolted onto it). So what happened to MS Ruby? Turns out the company decided to rename it and it ended up being the product known as Visual Basic.

Anyone think it ironic that just as VB is going through the lowest phase in its career (due largely to Microsoft’s faltering attempts to kill off VB, create a different language called VB .NET and hope that nobody notices), another language called Ruby is starting to occupy the same simple, user-friendly niche that VB once had all to itself?

Now, all that this latest incarnation of Ruby needs is the ‘visual’ thing…