From: Jim Freeze <jim@...>
Date: 2006-06-05T12:52:38+09:00
Subject: Re: I love Ruby - But how bright is Ruby's Future?

On Jun 4, 2006, at 10:09 PM, Hector wrote:

> I'm at a point where I'm asking myself if it is worth the trouble  
> for me
> to learn Ruby. How many people are really writting Ruby? Are there any
> truly robust, good applications being written in Ruby? How well are  
> Ruby
> libraries being maintained? I know there is a lot of documentation for
> Ruby but I find it hard to find very specific docs. Python seems to  
> have
> a whole lot more doc and many more books exist for Python. Does Python
> have a greater following. I love Ruby but I don't want to waist my  
> time
> with a laguage that may not have a future.
>
> I don't really care about learning 10 programming languages. My brain
> wouldn't be able handle it. I want to learn 1 or two languages and  
> learn
> them well.  I know Pascal very well, I know Perl pretty well, now I
> would like to get away from Perl and so I started out leaning  
> Python. I
> think Python is ugly and not very fun to write. I then jumped into
> Ruby(a whole lot of fun!) but I don't get the warm and fussies about
> Ruby's lasting power.

Have you seen the press on Ruby On Rails?
  Linux Journal
  Business Week
  Wired
  News Week
  ...and many others

It is certainly a hot topic now.

And, others are talking about Ruby (the Language) now.
Leo Laporte talks about it on his KFI The Tech Guy show - says it's  
his favorite language.
Plus it is used in almost every major corporation - whether they know  
it or not.

The press hype may die down, but the infrastructure that is being
built (and the fact that people like the language) pretty much secure
Ruby's existence for some time to come.

Relatively speaking, it is new compared to Python. That is most  
likely the reason
that there is less documentation. But, there are about 20 books  
poised for
publication on Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

Stay tuned, you have made a good choice.

Jim Freeze