From: Giles Bowkett <gilesb@...>
Date: 2006-10-26T04:52:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there really an impending Ruby fracture???

> If there is fracturing, it is with the Ruby as Rails point of view.
>
> My experience is that some people will prefer to start a Rails group
> rather than attend an known, existing Ruby group because they are more
> interested in learning the correct incantations to run Capistrano than
> in understanding how Capistrano works.
>
> For some, Rails is a nicer PHP or VB; Ruby per se is not of interest to
> them.  (Which is fine, unless or until Ruby discussions or gatherings
> are dominated by application development monoculture.)

Rails brought me to Ruby, along with tons of other people, but I've
seen very marked differences between the Ruby and Rails cultures.

I think the idea of "an impending fracture" reeks of alarmism, but it
would be delusional not to think a cultural shift of some kind was
taking place. Ruby books outsell Perl and Python books now, and that
certainly wasn't true a very short time ago. Ruby's identity is
guaranteed to change as a result of the Rails boom, both for better
and for worse.

Obviously I can't complain. As someone who only came to Ruby because
of Rails in the first place, I don't know what it was like before the
newbies got here, since I am one. I can say I prefer the Ruby
community, but to be fair, for me personally, the only thing really
annoying about Rails is that I have so much work I don't have any time
to learn Smalltalk and Seaside. I've certainly faced worse downsides
than that, when dealing with other technologies.

-- 
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org