From: Gregory Seidman <gsslist+ruby@...>
Date: 2006-12-31T01:31:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Proposal to create a new mailing list

On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 01:07:38AM +0900, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:
} Hello fellow Rubyphilics!
} 
} As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
} not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
} increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
} answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
} intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.
} 
} I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
} list intended for exactly those discussions.
} 
} Thoughts?

First off, I vote no.

Second, I think there has been a drop-off in "poignant" discussions largely
because people have settled on what is needed (or, rather, the community's
view of where Ruby should be going matches Matz's view to a large extent).
At this point, there are really two major priorities for Ruby: some
cleanup (piddling missing functionality like blocks that take blocks, code
cleanup/rewrite, removing syntax ambiguity, a formal specification of the
language, etc.), and performance (i.e. a VM rather than an interpreter).

The first is being served by progress toward Ruby 2.0, which mostly gets
discussed on ruby-core, I think. The second is being addressed by numerous
initiatives, including YARV, Rubinius, Ruby.NET, Cardinal (Ruby on Parrot,
which may or may not be dead), and JRuby.

Third, I think you'll find that a lot of the "poignant" discussion is
happening on blogs rather than the mailing list. For example, _why's blog
(Redhanded) is a great place to find some interesting discussion of deep
Ruby, particularly meta programming.

Finally, try releasing something cool (that isn't a Rails app or plugin)
and announcing it. I think you'll find that there is a lot of room on the
current list for discussion when there is something specific to talk about.
Not to be a _why fanboy, but Hpricot has gotten numerous discussions going
both on ruby-talk and on the Rails list.

} Daniel Schierbeck
--Greg