From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2006-06-06T13:12:29+09:00
Subject: Re: I love Ruby - But how bright is Ruby's Future?

Francis Cianfrocca wrote:
> Because I respect you, I'm going to respond as if you're serious.

Thanks, but I am serious.

> 

> 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.
> 

One night?   Right up to speed?



Ok.



>>>> Interesting.  I'm always stuck by people who don't get think that
> 
> everything is fair game for questioning.
> 
> Here, you made two different points ("get" vs "think") as you decided 
> midway
> through writing the sentence to pull your punch ;-). 


Really?  Which of the two words did I intend to delete, but missed in my 
editing?


> I get (and I even
> think) that everything is fair game for questioning. But James, think twice
> about this: not everything is WORTH questioning.

Ah, but how does one know before hand?  Or should I not question this?

I'm deeply skeptical of extravagant claims and sweeping assertions.
(I'm leery of the notion of superstar programmers, but that's another
matter.)

But about Ruby popularity: I'm a businessman, too.  And a coder, and an 
artist, and a writer, and a bunch of things.   Widespread 
[interest|use|acceptance] of Ruby has different value to me from 
different perspectives, but overall it is not a big concern.  That a 
client is aware of Ruby has, on at least one occasion, been useful. 
That magazine editors consider Ruby of sufficient reader interest to pay 
me to write articles is quite nice.

On the other hand, I wasn't drawn to Ruby because of its popularity, or
the prospect that it might one day be big.  And the increase in traffic
on ruby-talk is a mixed blessing (although a false elitism is no fun
either).  But here we are.

Years ago, when (once again) trying to decide what to be when I grew up
(a consideration still unresolved to this day), I read The Soul of a New
Machine, by Tracy Kidder.  It describes how engineers from Data General 
designed and built a new 32-bit minicomputer.  And very early in the 
book it said that the founder of the company recruited  his engineers 
with a small ad that said, "Have fun and make money."

That's pretty much been my goal.  Have fun, and make money (in that
order).  And Ruby helps me do that.  So long as that stays true, I'm happy.



-- 
James Britt

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally
  for machines to execute."
   - H. Abelson and G. Sussman
   (in "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs)