From: Julian Leviston <julian@...>
Date: 2009-04-13T11:25:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Can Ruby stay ahead ?

Personally I love your sentiments Robert. If I ever do any  
evangelizing its simply because coding in ruby is so much fun that if  
someone asks I'm all over that question like a nun sandwich - to  
paraphaze the mighty boosh. Lol. Its the same as recommending anything  
that's awesome like a good cafe, movie,  book or a nightclub. :) but  
appropriately. This is really not a religion. I find ruby people have  
such a pragmatic and intelligently well thought out idea set... And  
security, because they're not afraid. Its very embracing. The only  
reason we'd need fervour or blind acceptance is if we were insecure.  
We're not tho. We honestly don't mind a whit if joe bloggs uses it or  
not, but in much the same way that recommending medicine to improve  
someones life will help tremendously, its natural. As long as you're  
happy, that's all that really counts. Some people like being sad or  
living with dis-ease. That's ok. I'm actually thankful for diversity,  
because mass-adoption tends to decay things somehat. The context shift  
loses the potency of meaning.

:)


Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/
Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/

On 13/04/2009, at 1:50 AM, Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com>  
wrote:

> On 11.04.2009 21:14, Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:
>> The truth is the C implementations of Ruby are only one part of our  
>> quest to conquer the world...there are a lot of developers out  
>> there on existing VMs and platforms that need to be brought into  
>> the fold. And they're not going to leave those platforms. The best  
>> way to bring them over is to embrace the Ruby implementations for  
>> those platforms, and do everything possible to make sure they're  
>> top-notch. The alternative is losing mindshare to languages like  
>> Groovy or Scala on the JVM or IronPython, F#, or C# on the CLR.
>
> But why do you say those people "_need_ to be brought into the  
> fold"? Do we (or Ruby) really loose something if we do not insist on  
> converting the world over to Ruby?
>
>> But this also raises another question: Does the Ruby community want  
>> to be all-inclusive? More and more I see Ruby groups splintering  
>> into the "regulars" and the "elites", and sometimes the elite  
>> groups splinter even further. Many of the Ruby old guard want to  
>> keep Ruby an exclusive club, and I think that elitism hurts the  
>> community.
>
> I view this differently: to me it seems the Ruby community feels  
> little urge to evangelize (apart from Rails maybe) which I find very  
> pleasant.  IMHO this is not the attempt to keep others out but  
> rather an attitude of letting everybody pick the tools that suit  
> them best.  If it is not Ruby, then that's perfectly OK.  I find  
> this quite a laid back approach and it is certainly one of the  
> things that makes this community such a nice place to be for me.
>
>> I believe it's important for Ruby to continue growing and to draw  
>> in as many Java, .NET, and other platform developers as possible.
>
> Why?  Do you fear extinction of this wonderful programming language?  
> Ruby is here to stay.  Even if development of the language would  
> stop right now (what I do not hope) it does not stop being useful to  
> a lot of people.
>
> Kind regards
>
>    robert
>