From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2005-07-19T02:58:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby momentum?

Kirk Haines wrote:
...
> And to be clear, I am in a it of a devil's advocate position here.  I'm not a 
> fan of the way these things have been promoted personally, and I personally 
> don't use Rails both for personal and for technical reasons (it wouldn't work 
> for what I do).  But I do respect David's accomplishments.  I do think that 
> in the long run there's a lot more good than harm to come from his 
> strategies, even though I can quibble with how well I like or dislike the 
> specific strategies, and I do think there are things that can be learned from 
> both the successes and the failures of those strategies.

I tend to agree, and it's hard to argue given that many many people, in 
a crowded, ADD-wrought environment are talking about Ruby.  Hell, I get 
paid to use RoR.  I like that.  But when I hear from people who have 
been put off of Rails and Ruby because of the hype then some community 
reflection and discussion is in order.

> 
> As a discussion of advertising, it boils down to whether fostering strong 
> emotional reactions, sometimes well beyond what facts can support, is a valid 
> approach or not.
> 
> As a Ruby discussion, though, I think it's important to look past all of that 
> to the reason why so many people who have never touched Ruby before are 
> liking Rails.  It's not because of Rails, itself.  It's because of Ruby.  
> Rails has some magic and convenience and nifty things to make the developer's 
> life simpler, but it's the Ruby that converts these PHP and Java guys to 
> using it.  And when they show off their accomplishments to others, it's the 
> Ruby that's going to hook them as well, and I think that's a win for 
> everyone, even if the walk to get there was filled with some exaggerated 
> emotionalism.

I hope so.   What I also hope is that we avoid the Struts/J2EE 
phenomenon, where is isn't enough to simply use Java for a project, one 
has to use $APPROVED_API_TECHNOLOGY (Struts, Spring, Maven, what have 
you).

(Though there are worse things then being told you have to use Rails ...)



James

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