From: Francis Hwang <sera@...>
Date: 2004-11-18T22:58:08+09:00
Subject: Re: The Poetry of Code


On Nov 18, 2004, at 5:53 AM, David A. Black wrote:

< snip >

>> November 17, 2004
>> The Poetry of Code
>> At work we've been developing some applications using the Ruby 
>> programming
>> language and the Ruby on Rails web application framework. I want to 
>> be a
>> skeptic. I want to dislike the language. I want to dismiss it as a 
>> simple
>> toy, an interesting intellectual exercise but not worthy of serious 
>> work.
>
> It's great that he got beyond this but it's disconcerting to think
> that something or someone, somewhere, predisposed him to view Ruby in
> this light in the first place.  Well -- it's their loss.
>

I won't speak for him, but I think it's a fairly widespread opinion. My 
guess as to why is that people automatically think programming has to 
be difficult (i.e. lots of static typing, necessity of expensive IDEs, 
etc.) in order to be effective. Rubyists come along with their talk of 
enjoying their work and serious Javaists think to themselves "That's 
nice, but there's no way that would work at my serious company doing my 
serious thing."

Francis