From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-04-17T07:27:54+09:00
Subject: Ruby Libraries (was Re: Re:)

On Apr 16, 2005, at 4:52 PM, Pascal GUICHARD wrote:

> The fact is that I am a little bit disappointed by the libraries, and 
> the
> evolution :

I find Ruby libraries to be of a generally high caliber.  I agree that 
we're still short in a few areas, but that seems to be shrinking all 
the time.

I think the real issue here is finding the good libraries.  The RAA 
isn't perfect for this yet and changes have been discussed here in the 
past.

Still I'm confused by what you hope to gain from a blanket statement 
like this?  Do you want us to show you what libraries we consider 
essential?  In what areas?

Remember that this is a largely open source community.  Jump right in 
and help us fill in the holes!

> But on the hand, another lot of projects/libraries are present but 
> somewhat
> outdated at best, going even to deprecated/inoperatives such as the
> ruby-python bridge, that IMO
> Should be one of the most well maintained because of all 
> work/llibraries
> that it would make accessible, such the library I mentionned :
> twisted-python, and also a lot of python work.

No offense intended, but this seems silly to me.  If you want to 
program in Python, go for Python.  Firing up Ruby to bridge to a very 
similar language seems odd to me and I have no use for a library that 
helps me do that.

Perhaps what is really needed here is a Ruby port of Twisted.  That 
makes a lot more sense to me.  If that's really the goal here, let's 
create a solid Ruby solution, not hack together a strange Python 
bridge.

I'm not familiar with Twisted, but I just looked over the site a 
little.  Is it a mainly a networking library?  It seemed to include an 
event loop as well.  Is it anything like Perl's POE?  If I'm 
understanding any of this correctly, I can say that I personally would 
love to see a good Ruby framework like this.  Start the project on 
Rubyforge and I might even sign on to help.

> So compare the latter scheme for Java, with the present one for ruby 
> that is
> maintained and evolving by only one man, even though as much brilliant 
> as
> you want.

I really don't feel Ruby is evolving from one man.  Matz may control 
the language, but that doesn't tell a fraction of the whole story.  
Look at some of the great libraries in Ruby's standard library that 
weren't created by Matz.  What about projects like RubyGems, Rake, 
Builder, Redcloth, Needle, Rails...  I could go on and on!  What about 
Dave Thomas's work to bring Ruby to the masses?  One man may have given 
us the canvas, and we're more than grateful for that, but I doubt he's 
even the lead painter.

James Edward Gray II