From: Curt Hibbs <curt@...>
Date: 2004-10-28T05:43:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Name Dropping

James Britt wrote:
>
> trans. (T. Onoma) wrote:
> >  ...
> > Personally I think the whole name dropping thing sounds like
> High School.
>
>
> Yeah, perhaps.  But it can be a big help in grabbing attention.
>
> For those who have never even heard of Ruby, it may seem like a great
> but essentially arcane, "here today, gone tomorrow" language that nobody
> actually uses outside of Japan.
>
> Dropping names is not by itself an argument to use a language, but it
> conveys the idea that other people, whose opinions one might respect,
> have taken a look and found Ruby good and worth using.
>
> The best selling point for Ruby is Ruby, but it helps if you can get
> people motivated enough to try learning a bit and writing some code.

This is my point exactly.

I'm presenting to a group of hardcore Java developers. I want them to know
that there are developers out there whose names they know who use Ruby, and
with whom they may value their opinions. For some, it could mean the
difference between prompting them to look more closely at ruby instead of
dismissing it as just-another-language.

Probably my flippant title "Name Dropping" contributes more to this
impression than I intended.

Curt