Introducing myself - Sascha Ebach

[Sascha Ebach]

Hello dear Rubyists,

I have been quietly reading the list for the last two months now and
before I participate I would like to introduce myself and talk a little
bit about what I plan to do in Ruby. Before that I would like to say how
impressed I am with the nice tone of this list. This list must be the
most civilized list I have read (and I read quite a few) and all the ppl
are very nice. Almost every day there is something great to learn. Let's
hope it stays that way. I really would have liked to participate early,
but as always there is so much work that I simply didn't have any time
for that in the past.

My name is Sascha Ebach, I am almost 30 and I am living and working
mostly from home in a smaller town (Troisdorf) near Cologne in Germany.
Together with two other partners I run a small web design / development
firm called Hexatex (hexatex.de). We do almost anything that has to do
with web design / development, be it a small company site or an online
shop. We specialize in standards based web design with as much common
sense accessibility as possible. At the moment we even have some soon to
be released pro bono work for two non-profit organizations which will
really stress this.

Like many fellow Rubyists my personal background in programming is in
PHP (for the last 3.5 years now). That is what I have to use everyday at
work. But when I want to have fun while programming I use Ruby. Now that
I have become more confident in my Ruby hacking I plan
to gradually upgrade all of my sources to Ruby. I occasionally program
small admin scripts and have programmed some simple one time Open Office
Calc convertors (don't ask for the source, it's a mess but my main
focus is in web development. I have a lot of questions in that area and
I will address them one by one in the near future.

I am a great fan of small and simple solutions. Whenever a script (file)
gets more than 100 lines long I get pretty nervous. Usually I try to
refactor it until it is under 100 lines (I know that this is not always
possible . So far I haven't encountered any language which supports this
as good as Ruby. For this I thank the creator.

I look forward to finally being able to participate on this list. I
didn't dare before a formal introduction

 

[Simon Strandgaard]

I have been quietly reading the list for the last two months now and
before I participate I would like to introduce myself and talk a little
bit about what I plan to do in Ruby.

Welcome to Ruby.. I like when people introduce themselves.
Your introduction is OK

Before that I would like to say how
impressed I am with the nice tone of this list. This list must be the
most civilized list I have read (and I read quite a few) and all the ppl
are very nice. Almost every day there is something great to learn. Let's
hope it stays that way. I really would have liked to participate early,
but as always there is so much work that I simply didn't have any time
for that in the past.

Great.. however watch out not getting addicted


[snip]

I am a great fan of small and simple solutions. Whenever a script (file)
gets more than 100 lines long I get pretty nervous. Usually I try to
refactor it until it is under 100 lines (I know that this is not always
possible . So far I haven't encountered any language which supports this
as good as Ruby. For this I thank the creator.

[snip]

If you are worry about that bigger programs gets more fragile, then you should
try the test-first paradigm.

 

[Sascha Ebach]

Hi Simon,

If you are worry about that bigger programs gets more fragile, then you should
try the test-first paradigm.

Already do. Great fan of that.

Thanks

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

Hello from Beethoven's home town,

My name is Sascha Ebach, I am almost 30 and I am living and
working mostly from home in a smaller town (Troisdorf) near
Cologne in Germany.

To put some beef on the bones: The distance from Cologne is about the
same as that from Bonn (SE of Cologne, NE of Bonn, about in the
middle in S/E direction, a handful of kilometers east of the Rhine).
Anyway the city part of the phone number (0221) is that of Cologne.

Bringing up the subject up again: Are there people who would like to
have a table of regulars ("Stammtisch" in German) of Rubyists in the
Cologne/Bonn area?

The area already has Perl users, Linux users (about half a dozend
groups) and TeX users (and probably more as well) but the lobby for
Ruby is still somewhat limited.

I am a great fan of small and simple solutions. Whenever a script
(file) gets more than 100 lines long I get pretty nervous. Usually
I try to refactor it until it is under 100 lines (I know that
this is not always possible . So far I haven't encountered any
language which supports this as good as Ruby. For this I thank the
creator.

Why only the creator? Why not Matz as well? SCNR :->

I look forward to finally being able to participate on this list.
I didn't dare before a formal introduction

Background music: "Born in the FRG, I was born in the FRG,..." (sung
to "Born in the USA" :->

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Sascha Ebach]

Hello Jupp

To put some beef on the bones: The distance from Cologne is about the
same as that from Bonn (SE of Cologne, NE of Bonn, about in the
middle in S/E direction, a handful of kilometers east of the Rhine).
Anyway the city part of the phone number (0221) is that of Cologne.

Yes, my office number, for all intents and purposes. As a matter of
fact, my business sig gets added to every email and sometimes I forget
to trim it.

Bringing up the subject up again: Are there people who would like to
have a table of regulars ("Stammtisch" in German) of Rubyists in the
Cologne/Bonn area?

That sounds like a good idea. If someone would organize a meeting I
would like to attend. Best time would be sometime in June. There sure
are more ppl in this area who have tried Ruby. And if not we could burst
into a PHP meeting and try to convert some

Greetings

Sascha

 

[Simon Strandgaard]

That sounds like a good idea. If someone would organize a meeting I
would like to attend. Best time would be sometime in June. There sure
are more ppl in this area who have tried Ruby. And if not we could burst
into a PHP meeting and try to convert some

A ruby crusade the history repeats itself.

 

[Michael Neumann]

Hello Jupp


Yes, my office number, for all intents and purposes. As a matter of
fact, my business sig gets added to every email and sometimes I forget
to trim it.


That sounds like a good idea. If someone would organize a meeting I
would like to attend. Best time would be sometime in June. There sure
are more ppl in this area who have tried Ruby. And if not we could burst
into a PHP meeting and try to convert some

Maybe you also want to join this years Ruby Conference. Last year, the
first EuRuKo (European Ruby Conference) was held in Karlsruhe.

It's not sure when and where this years conference will be held. I hope
it will take place and many insteresting people like last year will
join, whether it will be in Berlin or again in Karlsruhe.

Regards,

Michael

 

[Stephan Kämper]

Hi Michael,

It's not sure when and where this years conference will be held. I hope
it will take place and many insteresting people like last year will
join, whether it will be in Berlin or again in Karlsruhe.

Is there any news about that? Especially the where part is interesting
to me. IIRC, Armin posted that the current date is the last weekend of
june (which seems pretty near in the future, given that the location is
not yet fixed).

Happy rubying

Stephan

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Stephan,

SK> Hi Michael,


SK> Is there any news about that? Especially the where part is interesting
SK> to me. IIRC, Armin posted that the current date is the last weekend of
SK> june (which seems pretty near in the future, given that the location is
SK> not yet fixed).

There was someone from Humbold University who wanted to ask someone.
But the last i remember was that he was very surprised that only 40
persons are expected to participate - and that was the last message.

 

[Michael Neumann]

Hi Michael,



Is there any news about that? Especially the where part is interesting
to me. IIRC, Armin posted that the current date is the last weekend of
june (which seems pretty near in the future, given that the location is
not yet fixed).

I can't say it for sure, but it probably will take place in Karlsruhe
again. I'll can come up with more accurate information soon.

Regards,

Michael

 

[Michael Neumann]

Hello Stephan,

SK> Hi Michael,



SK> Is there any news about that? Especially the where part is interesting
SK> to me. IIRC, Armin posted that the current date is the last weekend of
SK> june (which seems pretty near in the future, given that the location is
SK> not yet fixed).

There was someone from Humbold University who wanted to ask someone.
But the last i remember was that he was very surprised that only 40
persons are expected to participate - and that was the last message.

I haven't followed that discussion precisely, but I heard similar
things. IMO, 40 people are a great number... hopefully from all over the
world like last time...

So if Berlin is "dead", and no other alternate locations are provided, I
assume that EuRuKo 2004 will take place in Karlsruhe again. If no one
complains with Karlsruhe as location, I'll make this clear in the next
few days.

Regards,

Michael

 

[Pedro Baldanta]

Did you think in Spain? Summer, beach, ruby...

I can't say it for sure, but it probably will take place in Karlsruhe
again. I'll can come up with more accurate information soon.

Regards,

Michael

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

To quote some well-known old man: "Do or don't. There is no try."
People use Ruby or they don't. Nobody I know of did *try* Ruby and
then not start using it.

A ruby crusade the history repeats itself.

"crusade" is a hard word. I'd prefer calling it evangelization the
traditional Societas Jesu way >;-> Actually Sascha's idea reminds me
of what Greenpeace did in the past.

Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who
don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists.

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Sascha Ebach]

Hi,

Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who don't
use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists.

Or simply call it good marketing. A lot of ppl sure know Java, wonder
why I wonder what would happen if all of those would give Ruby a try.
But who is going to tell them ...

Sascha Ebach

 

[gabriele renzi]

Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who
don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists.

agreed!
People in this list should really start to write articles about ruby
for devchannel, osnews, linux*, daemonnews, developerworks, onlamp..
Everybody wants to learn ruby, they just does not know this.

 

[Simon Strandgaard]

"crusade" is a hard word. I'd prefer calling it evangelization the
traditional Societas Jesu way >;-> Actually Sascha's idea reminds me
of what Greenpeace did in the past.

Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who
don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists.

Agree, we need to spread the word a bit more.

Yesterday I went to the local library, and asked a guy looking at the
computer books, what he was searching fore. He wanted to learn perl5!
I of cause recommended him to learn Ruby (or secondary Python),
but unfortunatly no books at the library. My local library seems only to buy
bunches of Visual Basic books at the moment, which is unfortunate.
If somehow we could infect some libraries with books about Ruby, it would
be great. This is frustrating, any suggestions what to do?

Also much more Ruby in the media would be an eye-opener.

 

[Mike Calder]

A word of warning from a potential friend. Please don't take this negatively,
because I think you have something, and I'd like to help. If you can read
through to the end, there's a modest proposal.

It's too late and too early for you to start evangelising Ruby. That's a
shame, because right now there's a major opportunity for grabbing hearts and
minds. "Too late" because Ruby has grown beyond the early days when a
product can be forgiven holes, and "too early" because it still has some big
ones - getting newbies interested will leave a lot of them dismissing Ruby
unnecessarily.

I've only been using Ruby a few days, so I'm perfect to point out a few
things; I've no emotion invested, and am almost (but not quite) totally
ignorant about Ruby.

The great opportunity is that I and a lot of people just like me have just
realised (or are about to realise) that they have a serious need, and Ruby
might be just it. But I need to be sure. That means I need to see some
things about Ruby before I jump. They may exist, but I can't see them, and
that itself makes the point.

I'm a Java programmer, and am sitting on a product with world-wide usage and
over a quarter-million lines of code. I'm deeply worried, after the Sun/
MediocreSoft rapprochement, about the potential future of Java. That's a
shame, because for all its faults, Java is the best production language I've
come across in over thirty years practical experience in the industry - and
don't bother trying to engage me in a discussion over that; I know it's a
personal evaluation.

However I am sufficiently worried about the future of Java to consider
alternatives, and after looking around, Ruby seems the best bet out of a
narrow field. The criteria are:

* Proper OO.
* Write once, deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale.
* Open Source with unrestrictive licence.
* Comprehensive functionality, good libraries, easy extensibility.

Now you ruby experts know that ruby is good for all this. My first point is,
however, that after looking at ruby in some detail for well over a full day,
I was reluctantly about to discard it as a possibility because it doesn't
support Unicode, and that or something like it is necessary for "Write once,
deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale".

Yes, I know. But it took me two days to find out, and I *still* don't know
how to write or handle Unicode strings in ruby code. Or where to go to find
out. So, POINT 1. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, a current
features, capabilities, and extensions document. A central repository of
HOWTOs would be nice (how about one on how to write and handle Unicode in
Ruby? The world doesn't end in Japan and America.)

Next point. To handle what I (and probably most Java programmers) want
requires a good, configurable, GUI. I'd heard of Tcl/Tk, but most of the
examples I'd seen were pretty simplistic and, how to say this politely, not
overdesigned. Some of what I read mentioned others. It's nice there's a
choice, but you can't make a choice without information. If you make the
wrong choice because of lack of information, by the time you realise, you may
have invested so much effort that you're stuck. I took a look at Fox for my
eval. So, POINT 2. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, some good
examples of how GUI coding can be done with different packages, and
INFORMATION about the different possible choices. Oh, and the GUI code comes
from another website? It's a separate product? You mean I have to install
*three* things? Ruby, the GUI toolkit, *then* the Ruby toolkit enabling
stuff? Where's the documentation?

Finally (for this posting at least; it's too long already), distribution.
Windows users seem to have it nice; preconfigured downloadable distros. I
use Linux, so of course I'm happy to download fifty-eight different source
code tarballs from nineteen different websites for all the options I want,
and configure, make, and install each of them (in the correct order so as not
to muck up pre-requisites), *then* manually add links to put the libraries in
the right place for my particular Linux distro, then copy files all over the
place when it doesn't work.

After all, that's what every Ruby hero has had to do over the years; that's
how they learnt how Ruby works.

Naah. If I had any sense I'd have dumped this and gone on to something
productive days ago.

99% of the people you might want to attract would have; I suspect you've lost
a few already. We're not all sysprogs, and you need the ordinary joes as
well as the early adopters and enthusiasts.

You need to have good packages for all the distros. Something like the Java
SDK and Runtime packages. A single file download and install that contains
*everything* (yes, Victoria, the GUI as well). OK, that means big files, but
disks are big these days, and install procs can have things called options.
Oh, and if you need to distribute applications to end-users (yes, those
mythical beasts *do* exist), you need a tool to generate customised runtime
install packages of Ruby and whatever extensions are needed (oh, and it needs
to be able to recognise already installed rubies and do deltas).

Documentation and Distro packages. It looks to me that Ruby has some serious
good function and serious good technical people (and maybe a couple good
designers). There are a lot of interesting sounding people in the Who's Who.
Shame a lot of the links are broken.

What Ruby needs is some thought to the process side and the needs of the
non-techie user. I'm an application programmer, but for my sins I've had to
do the marketing bit to persuade people to use my products, and that sort of
thing gives you a perspective; it's dirty work, but someone has to do it. I
think Ruby users at the moment are enthusiasts; if it's to grow, it needs a
bit more ease of use.

I'd say Ruby has reached the position where it needs something like a Red Hat
(Ruby Turban?) to package it and represent it to the world. I'd be willing
to get involved in that. What do you think?

Sascha Ebach <[email protected]> wrote:

[snip]

And if not we could burst into a PHP meeting and try to convert
some

A ruby crusade the history repeats itself.

"crusade" is a hard word. I'd prefer calling it evangelization the
traditional Societas Jesu way >;-> Actually Sascha's idea reminds me
of what Greenpeace did in the past.

Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who
don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists.

Agree, we need to spread the word a bit more.

Yesterday I went to the local library, and asked a guy looking at the
computer books, what he was searching fore. He wanted to learn perl5!
I of cause recommended him to learn Ruby (or secondary Python),
but unfortunatly no books at the library. My local library seems only to
buy bunches of Visual Basic books at the moment, which is unfortunate. If
somehow we could infect some libraries with books about Ruby, it would be
great. This is frustrating, any suggestions what to do?

Also much more Ruby in the media would be an eye-opener.

 

[Hal Fulton]

A word of warning from a potential friend. Please don't take this negatively,
because I think you have something, and I'd like to help. If you can read
through to the end, there's a modest proposal.

[much snippage]

Overall I agree with you. Perhaps not on minor points here and there,
but I won't nitpick.

What Ruby needs is some thought to the process side and the needs of the
non-techie user. I'm an application programmer, but for my sins I've had to
do the marketing bit to persuade people to use my products, and that sort of
thing gives you a perspective; it's dirty work, but someone has to do it. I
think Ruby users at the moment are enthusiasts; if it's to grow, it needs a
bit more ease of use.

Granted. It's improving, but slowly. How to speed it up? 99% of the
people working on Ruby are donating their time.

I'd say Ruby has reached the position where it needs something like a Red Hat
(Ruby Turban?) to package it and represent it to the world. I'd be willing
to get involved in that. What do you think?

My opinion only: If something like this happens, I see two absolute
requirements.

1. It should be driven and/or approved by Matz himself.
2. It should be a team effort so that it doesn't become egoware
or abandonware.


Cheers,
Hal

 

[Andre Nathan]

I use Linux, so of course I'm happy to download fifty-eight different source
code tarballs from nineteen different websites for all the options I want,
and configure, make, and install each of them (in the correct order so as not
to muck up pre-requisites), *then* manually add links to put the libraries in
the right place for my particular Linux distro, then copy files all over the
place when it doesn't work.

I'm using Mandrake right now. Installing ruby is as simple as typing a
single command. Same for ruby libraries.

At home I have gentoo and FreeBSD, and installing ruby on these OSs is a
matter of typing a single command too.

There are also packages for many ruby libraries on these OSs.

When ruby 1.8.1 was released, there was no Mandrake package yet. I
downloaded the source and compiled it, and everything worked fine. I've
also used manually compiled libraries mixed with standard OS packages.
Everything worked fine.

I have never had to create any symbolic links to make things work.

And have a look at rubygems[1]. It's promising.

Best regards,
Andre

[1]http://rubygems.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl

 

[Sascha Ebach]

Hello Mike,

there is not a single thing that you say I would disagree on. IMHO you
describe the current situation quite good. Ruby is in a lot of regards
still in an early stage. Things are going to get better, but it'll take
time. There is no gigantic force (like the Sun Imperium) behind Ruby,
only a lot of enthusiasts. It's the same with a lot of open source
projects. Look at Linux!

The thing is, and there are probably a gazillion ppl out there more
qualified to comment than I am, if you want to work with one of these
enthusiasts products, there is a price for it. Your precious time. Like
you say, for a lot of products you are required to get under the hood to
just use it. But, you can not really expect much more from the ppl who
create all this in their free time.

I think the situation is not all that bad. We will still see lots and
lots of years come to pass before projects like Ruby, GUIs in the Linux
/ Unix world, etc. will significantly mature to be really measured with
commercial products. They have already done so in the past. A great
deal. For someone working with software for so long you can probably
realize that it takes a very long time before things get really stable
and usable. Not considering the fact that a lot of open source
developers work on their projects in their free time and not full time
or even get paid.

In the meantime it would be a good idea to infect other early adopters
and enthusiast with trying out Ruby simply because its syntax and a
lot of its design ideas are so beautiful. And it is fun to program in Ruby.

Will you be able to do all you want with Ruby really soon? No! For that
you probably have to come back in 5-10 years (hopefully earlier). But,
nobody is saying any different (I think). As always, for your production
code choose the most appropriate language(s) and tools if you feel that
in your particular space Ruby is not mature enough.

I myself want to use Ruby instead of PHP in the web application space. I
think for this purpose it is really a great fit at the moment although
it could probably get better.

Cheers