From: Elliot Temple <curi@...>
Date: 2006-06-06T12:26:21+09:00
Subject: Re: I love Ruby - But how bright is Ruby's Future?

On 6/5/06, James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> wrote:

>> Wow. That's surreal.
>>
>> I have a hard time imagining someone who really understands software
>> development and yet doesn't care if someone dictates what language is
>> used.  And yet can be (equally, one hopes) productive whether working
>> with VB, Lisp, Cobol, or Brainfuck.

On Jun 5, 2006, at 8:10 PM, Francis Cianfrocca wrote:

> It may be that you haven't ever worked with the kind of person I'm  
> talking
> about. He's the one programmer in a hundred who can do the work of  
> the other
> ninety-nine. I probably wouldn't waste him on a Cobol or a VB  
> project. I'd
> certainly consider him for Lisp. If I really had to code something in
> Brainfuck and had made the decision rationally, then I'd certainly  
> consider
> him for that as well. (But wouldn't assembly language be better  
> than BF for
> almost any purpose other than demonstrating BF's specialness? And  
> yes, I
> would definitely use my superstar on an assembler project.)
>
> I can't speak to your experience. But in mine, the very best of the  
> best are
> seduced by the inherent interest of the project, the opportunity to  
> work
> with people they respect (and it's HARD to win their respect), and  
> above all
> the chance to learn something new. The choice of programming  
> language is
> something they care about (I exaggerated upthread), but it's far  
> from the
> top of their list.
>
> I asked one of my favorite guys to do a Ruby project three years  
> ago. He had
> never heard of Ruby but he took the project. Just as I expected, he  
> was
> right up to speed on Ruby almost immediately (essentially in one  
> night) and
> did more production-quality work in less time than all of the  
> experienced
> Rubyists on the project. With these guys, it's like their brains are
> orthogonal to language issues.

I would happily do a project in assembly if there was a good reason  
to. I would hatefully do a project in assembly if Ruby was a 100x  
better choice.

James is right that we should care which language we use. Using the  
best language for the job (or a reasonable, competitive choice) is  
very important. Making your star code everything in Java would  
considerably lower his morale and productivity.

Francis is right that a star does good projects, and what tools he is  
using is a side issue, because he can easily pick up any tools ... as  
long as he wants to. If the tool is actually an appropriate choice,  
and the project is interesting, the star will want to.

-- Elliot Temple
http://www.curi.us/blog/