From: Chad Perrin Date: 2007-03-06T06:45:16+09:00 Subject: Re: Boy I love the Ruby community On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 12:20:04AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > Chad Perrin wrote: > > > >Hey, it's a new language. I have a better question than to ask why I > >should learn it. How about "Why not?" > > > It's not a question of why or why not for me ... it's a question of "why > now?" And I can't come up with a reason to learn it now -- it's too far > along for me to change it, and too far from finished for me to use it > professionally. So I don't mind waiting until it is of professional > significance and not a hobby language. But I certainly don't have any > hatred for it just because it's Perl. Well, that makes sense. I'm not learning it right now, either. I'm following its development, somewhat, as an interested observer. I'm interested in what its final form will be. I'll probably start learning it right about the time I'm pretty sure I won't have to discard everything I've learned and start over again -- after release, in other words. I was asked about its value as a programming language right now, so I described it in some detail from my perspective -- something to do for fun or to help with development, and not so much something to do for career enhancement. I'd go for the "for fun" option, if there weren't too many other things I'm already doing for fun -- like working on achieving real competence with Ruby. > > Now if the Perl 6 community were to decide, "OK ... we've had our fun > ... let's tie up all the loose ends and push towards a > professional-quality *release*" -- you know, things like code freezes -- > then I might be tempted to learn it. :) I'm already tempted, but I can resist temptation until that point. It's pretty easy, when giving in to temptation at this point would have to involve reallocating yet more sleep time. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."