Re: suggestions to the Ruby community

On Thu, 29 Aug 2002 20:12:24 -0400, Lyle Johnson wrote:

> stibbs wrote:
> 
>>Hi, first i would like to state that i absolutely love Ruby more than
>>any other language i use (perl, python, PHP, javascript, and now ruby).
>>Others i work with also have taken a look at Ruby and most have the same
>>feeling about it i do. That being said, we found that there is a huge
>>lack of english documentation and therefore would consume to much of our
>>time to learn it and apply it for use in our work.
>>
> The Ruby book list:
> 
>     http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyBookList
> 
> lists a considerable number of English-language books. "Programming
> Ruby", the one that most Ruby users consider to be a "must-have", is
> freely available on-line here:
> 
>     http://www.rubycentral.com/book
> 
> It's also included in the Windows installer for Ruby. Some of the other
> books, such as the "Ruby Developer's Guide", focus more on contributed
> modules for GUI development, database access, XML and web services.

Not to sound rude, but as i stated in my first post "Please take into
considera tion my co-workers and I do know how to use
google and ri, we have found all the documentation and articles that are
out there on Ruby." We have read through the Documentation and online
books you refer to in this post, we also know about the dead-tree books that
are out there on Ruby. I am sharing our overall point of view with
the community after having done some thorough research. It's an opinion
and we all know what opinions are comparable to, so take it or leave it.


> 
>>suggestions:
>>
>>Documentation:
>>
>>english speaking ruby users should get together and copy the idea of
>>python's module index.
>>
> Most, if not all, of Ruby's built-in modules are documented in
> "Programming Ruby".

see above

> It is true that for some of the contributed modules,
> the only available documentation is in Japanese.
> 
>>Other than documentation, maybe it would be a good idea for people who
>>also know Perl to go through CPAN and port the modules that are very
>>useful to various types of companies.
>>
> Maybe you could be one of those elusive "people"? The library modules
> page:
> 
>     http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?LibraryModules

been there

> 
> serves as one focus for this kind of wish list. And, if you haven't
> already discovered it, the Ruby Application Archive:
> 
>     http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/raa.html
> 
> is the central catalog, so to speak, for contributed Ruby modules.

been there also
> 
>>I can honestly say that if there was the type of documentation available
>>for Ruby that there is for Python our company would adopt it, we already
>>like Ruby because from doing a bit of research Ruby has more community
>>contributed modules than Python. In my career as being a sys admin and
>>web development programmer I have noticed is that when companies are
>>looking to embrace open source tools they look at the community support
>>which basically adds up to "how many modules do they have that can be
>>used in business and how are the docs". Our project manager even took a
>>liking to Ruby but it was agreed by all of us we can't use it due to the
>>lack of thorough documentation on standard modules/classes/methods and
>>also community contributed ones.
>>
> You are correct that Ruby's community is very active and enthusiastic,
> and if you can be more specific about which modules, classes or methods
> aren't documented to your satisfaction that would probably help people
> point you to the appropriate resources. 

to make it easy, how about 97% of them (and yes, i think
i'm very close with that percentage), my original post was a broad
generalization of all the documentation of all the modules and ruby in
general. All you have to do is look at the english documentation on the
modules to see that they are severely lacking in thorough explanation of 
their use and methods.

>As I mentioned earlier, there's
> a lot of good English-language documentation available (on-line and
> elsewhere).
> 
>>Ruby is an excellent language, with Perl 6 taking at least another year
>>or (and most likely) more and the Python community's focus on what is
>>obviously hobby projects that seem to be for the most part rebuilding
>>the wheel 7 times over, you as a community should take more of a
>>proactive approach to pushing Ruby onto the general public (average joe
>>programmers) and companies. The way to do it is through thorough
>>documentation and modules companies find useful. I suggest following in
>>the style of matz by grabbing the best from other communities and
>>applying it to Ruby (Python style documentation and the most frequently
>>used modules from CPAN).
>>
> As a member of the Ruby community, I hereby appoint you as a fellow
> member of the Ruby community. So get to work!

That's great, but i actually have a side project that has nothing to do with
ruby but does have to do on feeding information to a specific community on
open-source and linux related issues and it consumes most of my spare
time. With my original post i was hoping to convince people without a
side project but looking for one to think about documentation and/or porting
modules. I'm also not trying to dictate what people should do for their
projects, but sometimes in order to really help or make a difference you 
might not want to make the 99th wiki wiki clone just for something to do.
My side project lost it's fun very quick within the first year it starte.
2 years later i am still doing it because i realize there is a need for it
and it makes a real difference to the specific community it targets.

> 
>>Please take into consideration my co-workers and I do know how to use
>>google and ri, we have found all the documentation and articles that are
>>out there on Ruby, it was pretty much a 2 week long project our dev crew
>>and project manager did in our spare/off-work time.
>>
> Interesting. When I do a google search for "ruby":
> 
>     http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=ruby
> 
> the fifth link in the list is the on-line version of "Programming Ruby".
> The eighth link is to the Ruby Garden portal site, which is the source
> of most of the other links I've quoted.

as i mentioned before, i've read through it and so have my coworkers.
> 
>>I like Ruby, this isn't meant in any way as a put-down, it is meant to
>>maybe get some programmers to take more of a proactive approach to
>>spreading Ruby and think a little bit as a small company would if there
>>were lots of lazy but big competition in the same field with the idea of
>>taking over most of the market share within a year or so. Once Perl 6 is
>>out, if Ruby hasn't edged its way into a bit more companies, this is
>>just an assumption (and a big one), I think it will be very hard for
>>Ruby to pick up steam in the English-speaking countries.
>>
> Sounds like Perl 6 is two years too late (and counting). Ruby has been
> picking up a tremendous amount of "steam" in English-speaking countries
> over the last few years; it didn't just suddenly appear out of thin air
> when you heard about it a few weeks ago. 

"it was pretty much a 2 week long project our dev crew and project manager
did in our spare/off-work time." means exactly what it states and nothing
more. It was a 2 week long unofficial project to consider using ruby as one
of our tools. I have known of ruby for atleast a year and a half and
have played with it off and one since then, also, my coworkers except for
our project manager have been hip to ruby for a while since we have fairly
good personal relations with each other (AKA when i like something such
as ruby i bring it up at work periodically) but i don't think they have really
toyed with it much until now.

>Since I'm not a Perl user,
> what, specifically, are the new features of Perl 6 that you believe will
> cause Ruby to lose steam once Perl 6 is released? 
real OO
>That is to say, what
> is it that is changing between the currently-available Perl 5.x and Perl
> 6 that will suddenly nullify the things that have drawn large numbers of
> "converts" from the Perl and Python camps?
Every person that i know of who "converted" to ruby has since long converted
back to using python as their main language due to the documentation issue,
and i have quite a few online friends i have kept in contact with for quite some
years that did this. And i find most people that i know do like perl but
they use python for the more clean/realistic OO. I think that rather than
read through my original post and look at what you can pick apart about
it, it might be a good idea to just try and see where i might be coming
from. Judging from your reply to my original post, it seems you assume
i'm just some newbie who has been looking at ruby for a few days and
didnt put much effort in finding what online documentation is actually
available for ruby (even though i stated the opposite in my original post).

Cheers,
Stibbs