From: Mark Roseman <mark@...>
Date: 2005-04-02T20:24:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Getting Ruby approved

 ptkwt@aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) wrote:
> >>Neither of these points sells Ruby. What sells Ruby is the
> >>productivity that programmers have when they use it.
> >
> >>This is only my opinion: I don't consider Perl as being on a level
> >>with Ruby in this respect, and Tcl is not even close. 
> >i'm amazed
> >that it's not more popular than it is outside of comp.lang.tcl
> 
> But would you really want to do soemthing substantial in Tcl?


Phil,

I can tell you that for a lot of people the answer has been and
continues to be "yes", they would want to do something substantial
in Tcl.  And yes, they have been quite successful at it. 

Effective evangelism of Ruby would be better served if it was not
about implying that people who choose other tools are crazy or
misguided (or just missing out) but about trumpeting the great
things that Ruby has going for it, while at the same time 
acknowledging it's still got its rough spots.

FYI, there are a lot of things in language like Tcl (and others)
that Ruby could learn from and benefit from; because its been
around substantially longer, its reached a level of maturity in
many areas that provides real benefits to developers.  That's not 
to slag Ruby, but just to suggest its not perfect (yet). But
knowing where other tools might be better today can only help Ruby
tomorrow, and that is something that would be good for everyone.

Mark 
(http://www.markroseman.com)

p.s. incidentally, I see many parallels in this community in
  terms of energy, enthusiasm, attitudes, etc. with what the
  Tcl/Tk community was like 10-15 years ago, when it was first
  emerging.  Ditto Python several years back...