From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2004-09-07T20:48:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby-Nuby forum

Hi --

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-09-07 at 10:05, Robert Klemme wrote:
> > 2. There are also those folks with quite some experience on the nuby
> > forum.  In that case, nubys might hesistate in the same way as they do
> > now.
> That's where the cross-posting comes in. The role of ruby-talk in this
> picture will be kind of a second-tier support. As Gavin wrote, it's a
> manual effort, but worthwhile.
> 
> > > Hosting and domain registration will be taken care of in the next couple
> > > of weeks.
> > So it's decided already?
> Not yet. We will go ahead if most of the community here is in favor of
> it and the forum will be referred from www.ruby-lang.org. There is no
> value in creating a BBS that nobody knows about :)

Like James B. and Robert K., I would respectfully advise against doing
this at all.  

In fact, it's a pretty major disappointment to me that nubies would
feel this fear of ruby-talk.  I believe that's a very new phenomenon,
and I'd encourage all of you to fight through it.  It sounds like
you're talking about people with genuine interest in Ruby (not skript
kiddies), and in nearly four years here I've never seen any indication
that such people are not welcome.  I know that ruby-talk has changed
in some ways over the years (bigger, somewhat more troll-prone, etc.),
but I'd really like to think that people can still talk about Ruby
at any level here.

I don't think the bi-weekly cross-posting would help at all.  I notice
that Gavin's description of it includes reference to "the communities"
(plural), which is probably an accurate description of how it would be
but a really sad state of things to contemplate.  

There are also technical issues, and it's not just a matter of simple
things vs. difficult things.  The hardest thing in Ruby, sometimes, is
perceiving the simplicity that's available to you.  For example, many
Ruby beginners go through a phase of writing this:

  my_array.each {|e| puts e}

instead of

  puts my_array

and so on.  And some things are simple, once you learn them, but
really have to be learned and grasped.  For example:

  a = "hi"
  b = a
  a << " there"
  puts a        # hi there
  puts b        # hi there

  # but...

  x = 1
  y = x
  x += 1
  puts x   # 2
  puts y   # 1

Anyway -- I would urge you and your colleagues to join us here, and
also for interactive help visit #ruby-lang on irc.freenode.org.  


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net