From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2006-03-10T07:10:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Python looking better ...

Steven Lumos wrote:
>>... though they need someone to improve the grammar:
>>
>>http://www.python.org/
>>
>>
>>They got rid of that fugly "ping-pong ball" text logo, too.
> 
> 
> IMO, the Ruby site redesign guys are on a much better track.  Who
> really cares whether NASA uses Python? One thing I learned from having
> to sit through too many software marketing presentations is that
> organizations like NASA are to software what the Library of Congress
> is to books.  I finally started interrupting presenters to ask
> something like "Do you realize that *all* of your competitors have
> LANL on their peer-pressure slide too?"  Most actually didn't!

There's an argument to be made that language advocacy, and "selling"
Ruby (or Python or Lisp or whatever), is distasteful.

There's also a counterargument suggesting that the language and its
community will be better off for the greater exposure and mainstream use.

I believe that language marketing itself is fine, though it can be
poorly or distastefully done.  People looking to code Ruby for a living 
are helped if HR people or recruiters or whomever have heard of Ruby; 
people currently trying to persuade their coworkers or boss to adopt 
Ruby are helped if Ruby is better known and people are assured that more 
Ruby hackers can be found if a bus takes out the one or two Rubyists 
they know.

But there is the counter-counterargument that it is more important to 
attract the right kind of people, not simply large crowds of 
indiscriminate coders.  And that poor marketing (e.g., My language is 
cool, your language is a mouse poop sandwich) will turn people off.

I'd like to think that if you make the intrinsic strengths of Ruby 
obvious then it will (continue to) attract the people who will help make 
it better (by keen observations, code submission, library creation), 
which in turn will draw the attention of the more practical-minded.

But it may be that "success story" blurbs are still needed to win over 
project managers and such.


-- 
James Britt

"In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly
  universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by
  uncertainty cannot be the truth."
  - R. Feynman