From: Tom Allison Date: 2006-09-12T00:50:46+09:00 Subject: Re: anti-advocacy advocacy On 9/11/2006, "William Crawford" wrote: >Martin DeMello 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 > >2 words: "Vocal Minority." > >Yes, in every situation, there were very vocal people who will speak >their minds and give their highly ego-centric opinions. The fact that >it's hard or impossible to hear anyone else over them doesn't mean they >are right or in the majority. > >I'll even go as far as to say he's fallen into his own trap. He >-expects- people to advocate, and sees that in everything that happens. >His Perl linked-lists example is the perfect example. He expects people >to think he's advocating and would write his FAQ accordingly. The FAQ >writer (Avi) was shocked that he thought this way. The ML/Perl Typing >example is another great one. The question "But what's wrong with the >way Perl does it?" can be re-worded as "How is it better than Perl's >way?" This is not advocacy, or expectation of advocacy, but a simple >comparison to what the user already knows: Perl's way. I think you missed a point he was trying to make about the FAQ. If you answer with only, "Linked Lists are not required" then you risk a conclusing that Perl is bad because it is incapable of doing a simple task like linked lists. It's a legitimate defensive position to take. What is Ruby's position to the question, "Is it fast?". Is the answer a simple, "No" or is it more to the effect of "Ruby is fast enough in production but even faster in development"? I've typically heard the second answer. Simple benchmarking shows Ruby to be considerably slower than Perl -- for me. Is it fast enough? When my development logs in rails says I can hit 300 pages / second it's fast enough -- for me. >And the last reason for this being the Vocal Minority... Why would you >try to spread the word about something if you were -not- advocating it? >(Or trying to persuade people not to use it, I suppose.) You wouldn't. >So expectation of advocacy in a blog or presentation is not unrealistic. >You have a -reason- to be letting others know about the item, and it's >probably that you like it and want others to use it/know about it also. Because it has some interesting features, fast development, and may prove to be something really worthwhile. Developers should be aware of what else is on the horizon that people are excited about. But I'm not going to risk advocating it in a production environment with over a million dollars a day passing through it. Not until I have a *LOT* more personal experience with the details.