From: Ged Byrne <gedb01@...>
Date: 2003-08-21T02:13:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Why would you abandon Ruby? (was)

Heres an interesting article that discusses to camps
when it comes to growing a company.

Amazon: Get Big Fast.
Ben and Jerry: Slow and steady wins the race.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html

I think the principles also applies to growing a
lanaguage.

As you say, Python has fell into the get big fast
camp.  Fair enough.  Its a valid model, but is it
right for the language market?

The ultimate get big fast language was Java.  It
worked because there was a whole new market: the web. 
Like Amazon Java performed a land grab on the web and
won big.

Ruby has entered a field with many competitors, so I
think the start marketing and get big fast approach
does not suit the market it has entered.  The better
approach is to grow the language slowly and steadly.

By doing this the language will get all those little
things right.  The things that a quanatively small but
qualitively big.  The things that you don't see when
you make a list of all the features and put them side
by side, but that do leap out if you spend some time
using the language to solve some real problems.




 --- Martin DeMello <martindemello@yahoo.com> wrote: >
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@3dprogrammer.com>
> wrote:
>  
> > You are not as far along, but there is nothing
> stopping you guys.  Drop the
> > "build it and they will come" attitude.  Recognize
> that if that's your
> > attitude, people *won't* come.  They'll go to
> Python, or Java, or C#, or
> > something better.


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