From: Tanner Burson Date: 2005-01-22T00:41:26+09:00 Subject: Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity > Designing for the novice has the potential to create assorted artifacts > that, while useful the first few times someone attempts a task, are > soon no longer needed. > > The instructions for joining the ruby-doc mailing list on the main page > of ruby-doc might be a good example. Most people no longer need to be > hit in the face with the mailing list details, but they have to wade > past it each time. It may have been useful for some people for some > period of time, but after 2 or 3 visits, you have to start thinking to > yourself, "Yeah, yeah, I know. This is how I join the list." > Well I guess it's my turn to throw down on this subject. I am what many of you have declared needs to be the new "target market". I've been working with Ruby for only a couple of weeks now, and I've gathered a few tidbits of information some of you might find relevant. The biggest problem I've had is that the closest thing to a site containing updated links to the things I'm looking for has been google. All of the "major" websites (ruby-lang.org , ruby-doc.org, etc) don't appear on the surface to be updated on a regular basis. After looking into things farther I've found that the sites ARE updated, but there is no indication of such. Another large issue I've had is that after some searching there IS a lot of information out there. The problem being it is across several dozen sites, written at several dozen different times, using several dozen different versions of things. There is no source I can find that accurately aggregates and keeps on top of portions of this content. But IMO one of the largest sources of confusion among us newcomers is that there appears to be a serious duplication of efforts in a lot of areas. The biggest offenders are RAA and Rubyforge. I still cannot tell you the difference between a project posted at RAA and one posted at Rubyforge. Which one should be my primary search when looking for a library? This problem is something that happens to all languages at some point, but seems to have hit Ruby fairly early. Now as for specifics and suggestions :) Ruby-Doc.org is a great resource, I use it on a daily basis to look SOMETHING or other up. The problem is that the multi-frame templates, while helping simple navigation, kill my attempts to search for something. In general, I'd say that the single best resource for ruby, is this list. I've learned more, and found more great resources from here, than anywhere.