From: "Stephan Kämper" <Stephan.Kaemper@...>
Date: 2005-03-26T22:29:48+09:00
Subject: Re: comment on today's poll and more questions

Phil Tomson wrote:
  > Can some of the folks who use Ruby 'all the time' at work offer 
advice on
> how to find Ruby work/contracts?  I suspect 'Learn Rails' would top the 
> list - but what about other areas besides web programming - is Ruby making 
> more inroads in those areas as well?

First of all, in contrast to the jobs as an employee I had before, these 
days I don't have a boss to prevent me form using Ruby (or strongly 
recommending Perl or whatever). Second of all, I offer a service to my 
customers, not a language or a hype. In one case it's testing a dynamic 
library in another case it's a prototype (or demonstration system if you 
like).

In both cases the development time is more critical than execution 
speed. And both projects are newly developed systems, so there's 
(essentially) no legacy code, which of course makes it relatively easy 
to choose Ruby.

If these projects were older than they are, I would very likely have to 
use languages like C, C++, Java, Perl. But luckily they're not, and I 
really do enjoy that.

I think starting to use a new language in whatever kind of project or 
product development is not too easy because of the existing legacy code 
and the "conservation of momentum". Many people don't like changes, 
except changes they introduce themselves.

> How about those of us who have not done any web programming in the past, 
> but know Ruby - do we have an edge for the web programming (Rails) jobs 
> as well, or is it better to have done web programming and no Ruby than 
> the other way around?  Just curious.  I'm considering learning SQL and 
> Rails and trying to get into web programming field so I can get paid to 
> do Ruby programming again, but I've never done any web programming 
> before (one of the last holdouts, I guess).

You're not alone... :-)

Happy Easter and happy rubying

Stephan