From: Joshua Ballanco <jballanc@...>
Date: 2009-05-19T04:26:58+09:00
Subject: Re: what could be improved in Ruby for Science?


On May 18, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Juan Zanos wrote:

>
> 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.
>


So let's do something about that then, eh?

- Josh