From: W Kent Starr <elderburn@...>
Date: 2002-09-05T07:07:19+09:00
Subject: Re: suggestions to the Ruby community

On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 09:35, Peter Hickman wrote:

> 
> Those who can do,
> those who cant teach (or critisise - much of a muchness)
> 

And those who can do neither administrate.

This is the point I think the original poster was trying to make.
Perhaps he and his colleagues can do "ri" and "google" (and even get a
usable English copy from the Japanese) but the higher-ups who pay their
salaries do not consider such puruits "productive". And these guys know
it!

So, the "easy" short-term solution is to -not- adopt Ruby when the check
writers are content with the status quo, whatever that may be. The suits
won't show any interest unless and until Ruby is "buzzy". 

Of course, for that to happen, those who -do- the work must elect Ruby
over the alternatives. Perl was elected over C for sysadmin and CGI
because it made the programmers' lives easier; no "suit" decreed the use
of perl.

In the days when C was fairly well-documented but still "involved" in
terms of getting from a to b while perl was poorly documented but
relatively sleek in the same terms, programmers turned increasingly to
perl for day to day solutions.Today is somewhat different: perl -is-
fairly well-documented and the on-the-surface differences between perl
and Ruby are not that great, thus the hurdles to overcome when
advocating a switch become, paradoxically, greater.

As Larry Wall astutely observed, programmers are by nature lazy; if it
is easier to stay with the tools they have, that is what they will do.
If a dearthe of documentation is -perceived- as a disadvantage to Ruby,
many working programmers will not switch. Regardless of whether a
perception is accurate or not, the resulting reality (that is, the
action taken) is the same.

stibbs has pointed out what he believes to be a widespread perception
that may be holding back the adoption of Ruby; to that extent, IMO it is
an issue the community should address, whether in fact it is or not an
issue within the community.

Regards,

Kent Starr  


> At one school I attended I wasn't allowed to do technical drawing 
> because I failed Latin!
> 
>