From: "Aleksi Niemelä" Date: 2000-06-18T20:11:49+02:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:03507] Re: Python 3000 -> No, but there's 'R***' Aahz: > While the content of those posts wasn't > particularly objectionable, the Subject sets the tone > and you'd better expect that people will react. I appreciate a lot what Conrad has been doing but I have to say the subject Aahz pointed is very important too. I hope Ruby community wont get it's reputation for flaming, trashing or any electric warfare. It hasn't happen so far and I surely hope we make our best efforts to reduce risks for these unfortunate events in the future. I know Ruby is good enough to get supporters and users without any boasting or touting. Anyway, as I said, Aahz discussion had some ground. He said the content for the posts has been ok but felt the subject raised his temper. And I have to agree. I've got those 'what are these guys touting around' feelings too especially before I started to count myself to be part of the community. I believe I've got over those comments and just skip them but we're carrying them with us still. For one example, I think the line 'Ruby is better XX than XX.' is quite odd, not well worded and definitely most of the time plain wrong. The most common XX has been Perl and I have to say Ruby is worse Perl than Perl -- while we can argue is even Perl enough Perl :). But I'm very glad Ruby is worse Perl than Perl. That's why I'm using it more than Perl nowadays. When I started to use Perl I amazed my pals many times with it's compact power, even more with it's inherit 'if you touch a character of my code it wont work'. With Ruby I *hope* I won't meet the latter ever again. Ruby is a good language for beginners, but I think most of the short term forecoming Ruby users will be "converts" having some earlier experience with coding, languages and netiquette. So I'd say we have hope. But I'm sure we won't get to the point where we could hear conversation like the following example, because there will always be people who can't keep themselves calm, and we start to get reputation... "Why don't you use Ruby for that?" "What's that, haven't heard of it?" "Well, Ruby's a very nice language, fitting for your task at hand perfectly and if you haven't heard of it, it's because there's no touting evangelists around. Growing number of people know it anyway." "Gee, thanks. Have to check that one. So how do you know about it?" "I read a comparison how this feature X should be implemented in Y. There were comments for other mainstream languages like C, Perl, Java and Python. One dude then made a point how Ruby had already implemented feature Z, which is working well and it's a little bit what we need. So I studied the language, which was piece of cake, because Ruby is easy, simple and well designed and started to use..." "How come you're not using it all the time?" "..but I'm not using it at my job because my employee is currently paying me for completing our solution in Y. Well, Ruby is just another language, albeit good one. It's another versatile tool in my toolbox. Our Solution v.3.0 might have embedded Ruby though. Anyway, Ruby is quite mainstream nowadays, so you can expect all your computer related pals know it after few years. At least ones reading comp.lang.* :)" - Aleksi