From: Phillip Gawlowski Date: 2007-04-27T14:14:17+09:00 Subject: Re: Using Ruby in a Corporate Environment Steve Molitor wrote: > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Curt Hibbs > not used or accepted enough in the corporate world, and that learning > Ruby won't help them make more money or more marketable (in the St. > Louis corporate world). If corporations start explicitly looking for > Ruby developers they'll learn it, but not until then. I'm channeling Catbert, Evil Director of Human Resources here: Start looking for developers skilled in Ruby. > I'm not quite sure how to answer this one. While I do think that > something is going to succeed Java, I can't predict the future. I > can't truthfully say with assurance that Ruby will be the next big > thing in the corporate world. It *might* be, but it might not. > Personally I'm not concerned about what the next big thing might be; I > want a language that makes me and my fellow developers happy and more > productive. That's good for us and good for the business, I figure. > I have trouble understanding the narrow, strictly mercenary and > corporate focused point of view. Any ideas on convincing these folks? Again the evil approach: add it to the job description. Either they learn it (their employer *requires* it), or they should start looking for new jobs. If their only reason for learning a language is "corporations look for it", they can't be that good as programmers, as they only learn the usage of a language, but not its philosophy. Which, methinks, is key to becoming a Great Programmer, and not be a code monkey or mercenary.. P.S.: I am not advocating to make those programmers redundant outright, but recommending them to maintenance tasks, as has been suggested, is a good solution, IMHO. -- Phillip "CynicalRyan" Gawlowski http://cynicalryan.110mb.com/ http://clothred.rubyforge.org Rule of Open-Source Programming #9: Give me refactoring or give me death!