From: "Brandon J. Van Every" Date: 2003-08-20T21:48:26+09:00 Subject: Re: the mindshare of Ruby (was) Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote: > On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 07:28:09PM +0900, Brandon J. Van Every wrote: >>> And, learning a new language is always beneficial. >> >> No it is not. Learning a new language is a time sink, and time >> sinks are >> *never* a priori beneficial. They have to be justified somehow. > > Pragmatic side: > > Unless the language is total crap, you will normally find new concepts > and ideas there that can change the way you work, and make you more > productive even if you stay with the tools at hand. This is one common > justification. Pragmatically, C++ is an evolutionary dead end. 5 years from now, I don't think anyone's going to be writing new applications in C++ anymore. There's nothing about Ruby that's ever going to work in C++ land, and I won't be in C++ land much longer anyways. So trying Ruby, then "Eek! Back to C++!" would be a complete waste of time. Ruby might have more to say to Python, Java, or C# programmers. I think it will come down to expressiveness of language vs. paucity of tools. I don't like picking the wrong tools environment, it's another big waste of time. > Fun side: > > Learning languages is fun, I'd do it even if it were useless. I consider it pain and suffering. I think I see a trend, that Ruby programmers are mostly people who like programming very very much, for its own sake. Whereas I would never learn a language or technology unless it was going to do something important for me. I tend to be fairly architectonic about where that importance is going to come from, as opposed to spontaneous. The game design, the software architecture are important. The language? Not so sure. -- 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.