From: "Sean O'Dell" <sean@...[REMOVE_THE_SPAM]>
Date: 2003-08-20T11:26:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Why would you abandon Ruby? (was)

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> Sean O'Dell wrote:
> 
>>My point here is, I have yet to hear of a single person who left Ruby
>>for another scripting language.
> 
> But... what does it prove?  It doesn't prove that Ruby is the reason.  It
> could be, that people who find out about Ruby in the 1st place, have the
> developmental luxury to try languages such as Ruby.  And not the production
> pressure to abandon them for something else.  Industrial relevance was
> another question I was going to ask later, if need be, but you have
> precipitated it.

A billion people could be programming in Perl right now, and that 
wouldn't mean a thing because the pressure to produce code might have 
them locked in and unable to make a switch to another script language. 
It's those that have made the switch that are most interesting to a 
person evaluating Ruby.  Who is leaving Perl for Python?  Who is leaving 
Python for Ruby.  Who has left Ruby for Perl or Python?

That someone has learned about Ruby means they either have the luxury to 
try out new scripting languages during work hours (as you said), or they 
program on their own time and don't want to waste those few precious 
hours on a language they have to fight with constantly.  Either way, the 
reason for switching is interesting and pertinent.

The people who code at work and are locked-in to some language and don't 
enjoy programming enough to do it in their off-time are people who, I 
think, will have little insight to offer.  Their lack of input about 
Ruby can be safely ignored.  =)

>>I'm sure people have left Ruby for certain pragmatic reasons ("my job
>>requires me to write in Perl" or "Ruby just isn't as fast as assembly"),
>>but I have trouble imagining even one person leaving Ruby because it
>>wasn't a good enough script language for them.
> 
> On the subject of pragmatism, you are echoing my thinking.  I am curious why
> you think such pragmatic concerns "don't count."  Nobody has left Ruby...
> except those who have left Ruby?

Ruby is what it is, and people will leave Ruby when it can't be what 
they need.  Ruby is not suitable as a real-time embedded programming 
language, so if someone stopped programming in Ruby to program in ANSI C 
on QNX, I wouldn't count them when trying to weigh the worth of Ruby to 
myself as a script language.

What I mean is, if you are buying apples, weigh apples.

This is entirely subjective of course, and we're talking about a person 
evaluating a script language, so they ought to weigh the opinions of 
people who have also evaluated Ruby as a script language.

>>but I doubt you can find any Ruby-expatriates among the group of people
>>who have given it a solid try.
> 
> Ok, that's a more nuanced statement.  I don't feel like chasing all over
> Google for such answers, as I seriously doubt they are findable that way.
> Rather, I'll stick a wet finger in the air and ask a question.  Pythonistas
> go to Ruby Heaven when they die.  :-)  Where do Rubicons go?
> 
> I guess your answer is, "they live forever."  But maybe others have a
> different idea.

Something like that; I think Rubicons ascend to Nirvana the moment they 
"get it."

=)

	Sean O'Dell