From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2002-07-18T16:49:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Selling ruby to my boss

In article <a05100300b95bc60d7e7d@[10.0.1.12]>,
Francis Hwang  <sera@fhwang.net> wrote:
>So I've just started working as the sole programmer at a non-profit 
>which is heavily internet-based. Most of the code is in PHP or Perl, 
>and I would like to gradually migrate it to Ruby over time.
>
>I get a lot of leeway in this job, but this sort of a decision is 
>probably the sort of thing I'd have to justify to my boss, who's 
>likely to be nervous about it. Not about my ability to be more 
>productive with Ruby, but with the fact that Ruby is an uncommon 
>language compared to PHP and Perl. So if I get hit by a truck, or if 
>the organization expands and needs to hire new programmers, or when 
>we're looking for interns, it will be harder to find programmers who 
>know Ruby.
>
>Anybody have any advice as to what I can say him to make him less 
>nervous about making such a transition?
>

There was a time when nobody in the US knew about Ruby and those of us 
who were using Ruby were considered to be some sort of fringe element, but 
the times they are'a chang'in...  Now several Ruby books are in print and 
there are lots of folks who are at least aware of Ruby.  For example, the 
O'Reilly book "Mastering Regular Expressions" covers Ruby in the recently 
released second edition.  And Ruby is being used at several large 
companies (Agilent and Intel are two that come to mind).

It's also quite true that Perl programmers can pick up Ruby pretty 
quickly.  And IMHO Ruby code tends to be more maintainable than Perl code.

Phil