From: Juan Zanos <juan_zanos@...>
Date: 2009-05-19T04:08:14+09:00
Subject: Re: what could be improved in Ruby for Science?


On May 13, 2009, at 9:35 AM, Diego Virasoro wrote:

> Hello,
> I've noticed that languages such as Python are becoming more and more
> fashionable with the Scientific communities, along side more hard core
> classics like Fortran and Java.
>
> Do you think  Ruby is missing some piece of technology to be useful in
> science? Or poor libraries?
> In the end what do you think that could be done to make Ruby more used
> in Science?
>
> Diego
>

In order to learn anything you have to give up hope of learning  
everything.
Most of the scientific community I work with has chosen not to learn  
much about
software languages and tools citing the hope (or convenient fiction)  
that none
of that matters.  Some will confide that tools might make a difference  
but it's
too much of a time synch to really examine the problem.  Scientists are
interested in their fields more than software.

Right now there are few scientific libraries for Ruby and the ones  
that exist
often lack polish, are difficult to contribute to, and are difficult  
to install
and setup.  In comparision, a lot of the more Internet oriented Ruby  
libraries
are well tested, available as easy to install gems, ported to work on  
lots of
Ruby VMs, and available on modern distributed version control systems  
making
contributions, maintenance, and sharing much easier.

Possibly there is a window of opportunity during which Ruby solutions  
will be
adopted if they are sufficiently available.  I don't think it would  
take that much
time, effort, and money to make Ruby's scientific libraries a lot more  
compelling
than they are now.