G
gabriele renzi
Hi gurus and nubys,
Yesterday I had an epiphany[1] that I want to share.
WARNING: these is lazy thinking
It seem that, from time to time issues about ruby grow up as Urban
Legends and spread everywhere as misconceptions.
In the past the ruby community faced some of this problems..
[misconception 1]
About one year ago there was long talking about missing libraries.
Look at [ruby-talk: 62344]. dblack said something really interesting
at that time:
I'm getting worried that we're settling into a culture where Ruby is
"that great language that doesn't have the equivalent of CPAN,"
It seem that we fought that misconception[2]. And we won.
That argument became less and less common heard on internet forums,
and in general discussions. Possibly because, ATM we have libraries
that we did not had 1 year ago, or because other reached a greater
maturity level[3].
[misconception 2]
The next problem that ppl pointed out when talking about ruby was
"oh, yes, cool, but so little documentation..".
It seem that we won even this, thanks to a general effort about it[4].
I did not heard someone talking about this in a long time, what about
you?
[misconception 3]
The newer misconception that I notice is that ruby is just good as a
"prototype language". I heard this many times, and it popped up in
this list too, sometimes.
Wait: ruby *is* a great prototype language, but not just that.
Many people see language features like open classes, non-constants
constants, lack of static typing etc.. as "enterprise issues".
"you can't write serious apps in ruby, but it's good to prototype.."
How do you fight this?
Well, you need apps. We don't have applications. If you look at RAA or
RubyForge you may see lots of frameworks, libraries, but little apps.
Could you name 5 applications written in ruby and known to
non-rubyists? Could you do the same with other languages?
I know there are many people that use ruby.
But I wonder: when I talk about ruby and someone asks me to name a
largely used ruby app, why I can't think of anything?
Possibly ruby actually *is* just good for prototyping ?
PS
BTW there are even real reasons like the thread-safety, efficiency,
not big windows support[5]
--
[1] you just need to drive a car alone for >200Km withouth even a car
stereo, to get and epiphany for yourself
[2] or is it misconcept?
[3] we still need more libs, don't we ? not more than any other
language community, anyway..
[4] the pickaxe, 1.8.1/rdoc+ri integration, ruby-doc.org, some nuby
tutorials, people documenting the std libs, articles on internet(and
real life) resources, single projects with great documentation like
ruby-gnome2.. thank you all
[5] what about that patch to have threads working fine on windows? Why
there is not a mod_ruby/eruby/apache one click installer ?
Yesterday I had an epiphany[1] that I want to share.
WARNING: these is lazy thinking
It seem that, from time to time issues about ruby grow up as Urban
Legends and spread everywhere as misconceptions.
In the past the ruby community faced some of this problems..
[misconception 1]
About one year ago there was long talking about missing libraries.
Look at [ruby-talk: 62344]. dblack said something really interesting
at that time:
I'm getting worried that we're settling into a culture where Ruby is
"that great language that doesn't have the equivalent of CPAN,"
It seem that we fought that misconception[2]. And we won.
That argument became less and less common heard on internet forums,
and in general discussions. Possibly because, ATM we have libraries
that we did not had 1 year ago, or because other reached a greater
maturity level[3].
[misconception 2]
The next problem that ppl pointed out when talking about ruby was
"oh, yes, cool, but so little documentation..".
It seem that we won even this, thanks to a general effort about it[4].
I did not heard someone talking about this in a long time, what about
you?
[misconception 3]
The newer misconception that I notice is that ruby is just good as a
"prototype language". I heard this many times, and it popped up in
this list too, sometimes.
Wait: ruby *is* a great prototype language, but not just that.
Many people see language features like open classes, non-constants
constants, lack of static typing etc.. as "enterprise issues".
"you can't write serious apps in ruby, but it's good to prototype.."
How do you fight this?
Well, you need apps. We don't have applications. If you look at RAA or
RubyForge you may see lots of frameworks, libraries, but little apps.
Could you name 5 applications written in ruby and known to
non-rubyists? Could you do the same with other languages?
I know there are many people that use ruby.
But I wonder: when I talk about ruby and someone asks me to name a
largely used ruby app, why I can't think of anything?
Possibly ruby actually *is* just good for prototyping ?
PS
BTW there are even real reasons like the thread-safety, efficiency,
not big windows support[5]
--
[1] you just need to drive a car alone for >200Km withouth even a car
stereo, to get and epiphany for yourself
[2] or is it misconcept?
[3] we still need more libs, don't we ? not more than any other
language community, anyway..
[4] the pickaxe, 1.8.1/rdoc+ri integration, ruby-doc.org, some nuby
tutorials, people documenting the std libs, articles on internet(and
real life) resources, single projects with great documentation like
ruby-gnome2.. thank you all
[5] what about that patch to have threads working fine on windows? Why
there is not a mod_ruby/eruby/apache one click installer ?