From: schneik@...
Date: 2000-06-12T16:33:59-05:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:03332] Re: Selling Rubies by the Carat



Hi,

Andy and Dave wrote:

#  ______________________________________________________________
# |                                                              |
# |              Why should people learn Ruby?                   |
# |                                                              |
#  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#
#
# We know why _we_ like it, but we're interested why others do. This is
# motivated by the fact we need to produce compelling preface and/or
# back-cover copy that will draw people who've never heard of Ruby in to
# the book, and hence in to the community.
#
# I could go on here listing our reasons, but I won't because I don't
# want to taint your answers. But, if you have any great insights, we'd
# love to here them.
#
# On a related note, we're also looking for a word to describe the Ruby
# programming paradigm. Some people call Ruby a scripting language, and
# sell it by saying it's better than Perl, or more OO than Python. We
# don't feel that's doing the language justice,a nd in fact we go out of
# our way to avoid the word 'scripting'. To us, Ruby is a great general
# purpose language that's flexible enough to also let you do things that
# you can do with conventional scripting languages. So what can we call
# it? What one word completes the sentence "Ruby is a ________
# [programming] language"? This doesn't have to be an existing term:
# just a hook on which to hand a description.

OK, take the bull by the horns: Ruby the next-generation
POST-SCRIPTING language (for those who have outgrown so-called
scripting languages).

Alternatively, enchant the bull: Ruby is an ultra-class programming
language--i.e. ultra-flexible, ultra-OO, ultra-dynamic,
ultra-readable, ultra-maintainable.

Or stand on the shoulder's of giants: Ruby has the flexibility of
Perl, the readability of Python, and the dynamic OO power of
Smalltalk--all in one convenient package.

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)