From: Francis Cianfrocca <garbagecat10@...>
Date: 2006-09-11T21:56:18+09:00
Subject: Re: anti-advocacy advocacy

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On 9/11/06, Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/advocacy.html
>
> Interesting read, and most of the points he makes are very relevant to
> the ruby community.
>
> martin
>
>
It actually was somewhat interesting. It goes without saying that you get a
lot of advantages if you can induce other people to see things your way.
That's why advocacy exists, and why it will always exist. Most of the
article is yet another rehearsal of the eternal truth that people will react
in what seem to be irrational ways to better ideas that expose them to risk
or threaten to obsolete their own investments in time and knowledge.

How does it apply to Ruby? It's been said for decades that the potential
market for any new technology splits into a small sliver of first adopters,
a large chunk of converts, a near-equally large chunk of resisters, and a
small sliver of non-adopters. The first adopters respond to either passion,
reason, or both, but primarily they either discount or are willing to accept
the *risk* of the new. The converts will come along only after you can prove
two things: 1) there are clear benefits, and 2) they're not the first ones
to try it. (The resisters and the non-adopters are not economically
interesting and can be ignored.)

Ruby's two main benefits (and they are related) are that programmers find it
beautiful and graceful, and that it promises large productivity
improvements. Ruby programmers *love* programming in Ruby. That's proven,
and the passion there is enough to pull in more first adopters. As far as
productivity improvements go, that is a clear benefit that we have yet to
conclusively prove is 1) large and 2) uniformly available. When we do so,
then the converts will come. But it will take time (and continued advocacy)
because the defining feature of the convert-class is that they are not
willing to go first.

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