From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-10-05T11:29:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Recent Criticism about Ruby (Scalability, etc.)

Todd Benson wrote:
> Ruby will eventually (I think) become something more useful than PHP,
> mostly because it is a language, like other cool ones (LUA, Erlang,
> etc.) that attracts some very smart people.

There are some languages that can *only* be used by "very smart people". 
APL comes to mind, and I suspect there are those who could make the same 
case for Forth, Haskell and Prolog. For "most of us", languages like 
Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby and Lua are great *because* they're easy to 
learn even if you're not a "very smart person".
> 
> Everyone seems to be focusing on the cost/benefit analysis.  Have we
> forgot about how fun it is to program?

I haven't ... but I don't think fun is language-specific. I can't think 
of a single programming language I hated using, but then, I never used 
RPG. :) That one I think would have sucked.