From: "Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@3DProgrammer.com>
Date: 2003-08-20T15:07:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Why would you abandon Ruby? (was)

Sean O'Dell wrote:
>
> 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.

Actually, it would prove something.  It would prove that Perl has industrial
incumbency.  Then the question would be, is Ruby denting that incumbency?
Why or why not?  We discuss questions like this on the marketing-python
mailing list.  And no, I'm not a Pythonista.  My interest in the language is
exploratory, I'm uncommitted.

> 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?

I agree it's more interesting.  But volume of mindshare, and growth of
mindshare, is interesting to both industrialists and archivists.  What is
Ruby's future?

> 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.  =)

To be honest I find that a bizarre prejudice.  People have to program both
at work and in their leisure time to have relevant opinions?  Surely not.  I
for one have life pursuits other than programming!  I'm not interested in
languages that I have to relegate to a hobby, I'm interested in languages
that allow me to get prime time work done more quickly.  Part of that means,
I think, convincing the suits who might otherwise force you to keep using
Perl.  Again, we talk about these kinds of issues on marketing-python.

> 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.

Ok, good at scripting, not good at embedded.  How about large systems
programming?

-- 
Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.