From: Dan Doel <djd15@...>
Date: 2003-08-20T19:32:31+09:00
Subject: Re: social engineering (was)

This line of discussion is getting a little off-topic from the main 
thread, so we should probably
stop soon, but:

I wasn't complaining for myself, merely pointing out a (perhaps the) 
reason for his reaction.
I don't think you can legitimately take it as the general mood for this 
mailing-list. It is very
accepting and open in general, even as far as discussions of other 
langauges go. It's merely
that this topic is debated quite often (probably more often than any 
other topic), as well as
prone to devolving into holy wars of sorts, so it's little surprise that 
some are unhappy when
it comes up yet again.

I agree that you can just ignore the thread entirely. I personally feel 
bad doing that because
then I don't know if I can contribute or learn anything from it.

As for archival information, I'm not suggesting the Ruby FAQ, as I'm 
sure you're correct
that it's out of date (especially since Python just came out with a new 
version a month ago,
and updating the Python information on the Ruby site probably isn't a 
high priority :)). I
was suggesting more along the lines of going to ruby-talk.org and 
scanning through the
posts from the past couple months.  The new features of Python were 
known quite a bit
before they actually came out, so I'm sure there's lots of discussions 
on those new
features as they relate to Ruby.  I'm also sure you'll find information 
relating to your
original questions as well, whether you're looking for questions of 
language elegance
(which in ruby, practical terms often translates to speed of 
development), or
performance.  I doubt whether such information has become totally out of 
date in two
months (although ruby 1.8.0 might change the performance question, since 
it got faster,
but I doubt that will matter in the end).

- Dan