From: Francis Hwang <sera@...>
Date: 2005-03-05T09:33:14+09:00
Subject: Re: RAA Status & The Problem with Ruby

On Mar 3, 2005, at 9:49 PM, vruz wrote:

>> I guess what I'm saying is that when you're getting somebody to do
>> research on a library for the sake of a project like RPA, they have to
>> be extremely motivated to be able to use it long enough to have a 
>> solid
>> opinion on it. Whereas if you can find somebody who is actually 
>> _using_
>> that library to make their job easier, to work a little easier to put
>> food on the table, their opinions will be richer and researched with
>> more depth. So maybe initial efforts to reveal what projects are high
>> quality could start with that information.
>
> And that's exactly what we did.
>
> http://rpa-base.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.cgi?PackageAdvisor
>
> Of course this is work in progress, but I believe this aligns well
> with the ideas you expressed.

I recognize the intent of a page like this, but I don't know if it does 
the trick. I don't think I was use this page to help me choose a 
library.

Take the "ORM Packages" section ... mostly what's listed here is the 
libs themselves, and then a very short little brief about their 
compatibilities. But for me to evaluate what to use, I'd want more. How 
does libraries support, say, transactions? How nice is the API in 
general? Is configuration easy or excessively verbose? Does it make 
testing easy? These are the sorts of questions you can only answer 
sensibly if you've made a real try to use the code for something real, 
as opposed to just getting the install to work as an RPA volunteer. And 
I think they need to be _opinions_, not a consensus as suggested by a 
wiki page.

Particularly, what I'm looking for is information like "X programmer, 
whom I respect, uses Y library for Z reasons. So I will try it too." 
The page you sent does not currently do that.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/