[ruby-talk:03914] RE: Brave GNU World feature about Ruby

This seems to be good publicity. The link is
http://www.gnu.org/brave-gnu-world/ . Check out to see what's the content in
earlier issues.

My contribution for some Ruby zealots..ummm..advocates to process further,
merge other contributions and format a decent reply.

Brave GNU World standard questions:
-----------------------------------

 * What is it?

The classic definition; we have it already, don't we :?

Maybe we should point out http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/whats.html but that
seems to be better suitable to Special features/strengths.

 * Who would use it?

Everybody from the classic computing world using mainstream languages (like
C, Cobol or Java) who is willing to try out new way to create software.
Great deal of dynamic power and easyness of developing is waiting for them.

Other natural population is the people who are already using existing so
called scripting languages (notably Perl and Python).

 * Why would they use it instead of similar projects?

One gets simpler and easier syntax than Perl without losing the power. One
gets more flexible and powerful language than Python can provide.

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/testimony.html

 * Special features/strengths?

Easy syntax, full OO, consistent and powerful standard library,
multi-threading interpreter, garbage collection, simple extensions in C, and
the rest of the standard list. Maybe we should point out
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/whats.html

 * Special problems?

No real multithreading nor support for it, no built-in support for unicode
or dbc, small community, the lack of english documentation.

 * Who is working on it?

Matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto, [e-mail]), legion of Japanese gurus (when
shall we start to call them senseis :?), small  (<20) and quite active set
of western developers.

 * Plans for the close and distant future?

DBC, Ruby Unified Unit-Testing, todo list.

 * Interesting/fun stories that might juice up the story?

 * Website/FTP addresses?

http://www.ruby-lang.org
ftp://ftp.netlab.co.jp/pub/lang/ruby/  current stable: ruby-1.4.5.tar.gz
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/raa.html

 * License?!

 * Standard documents to read in this context?

http://dev.rubycentral.com/faq/index.html
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/doc.html
http://dev.rubycentral.com/ref/index.html

 * Anything you would like to see mentioned?

There's always room for different tools. This one happens to be quite good
one in many different tasks. (Positive way to say different scripting
languages or developers should not be fighting over such stupid points, they
could instead make the world better place (tm) and develop in many to gain
insight. For me it seems I'll stay in the Ruby world more often and longer.
:)

 * Answer to a question I forgot?

Is there any other webpages, or people. Well
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Ruby/ lists quite a few.
People are mostly Japanese, but I expect we'll see some western people in
the near future too.


NOTE:
 Everything you want me to read should be attached to the
 mail, because very often I will take my mail with me and read it
 where I don't have access to the net.