[ruby-talk:00822] Re: My favorite language's icon turned into a sheep!
From:
"Francois Le Coguiec" <francois_le_coguiec@...>
Date:
1999-09-28 03:31:31 UTC
List:
ruby-talk #822
In message "[ruby-talk:00818] Re: My favorite language's icon turned into a sheep!" on Mon, 27 Sep 1999 08:33:49 +0900 matz@netlab.co.jp (Yukihiro Matsumoto) writes: >Sheep, indeed. You like it, don't you? :-) Actually... yes, I like it, it is cute. It is just that... I don't know for sure about other countries, but for French people the sheep is not a very intelligent animal. It has a reputation of not being very creative or assertive, of always blindly following in a herd, sometimes even to his death. There is a famous story called "les moutons de Panurge" where one sheep goes over board and all the remaining ones just follow the first one and all drown. Here are a few references: http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/jhf/c03.html or http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/texts/rousseau/confj.htm (search for "Panurge") or http://sailor.gutenberg.org/etext98/ggpnt10.txt (*long*, search for "How Panurge caused Dingdong and his sheep to be drowned in the sea") It might seem like a very literary point, but it is actually quite pervasive in French culture, so I think kids and even programmers over there will know about it even if they never ever read a book! I think there might be something similar in English speaking countries, because of the English adjective "sheepish" which is quite derogatory. On the other hand, the sheep has a very cute and friendly appearance, and we certainly use it's whool to keep warm, and I'm not sure if we care about French programmers so much anyway! >Hummingbird version will apear in near future. I've just seen that one, I like it a lot. It is elegant, light, fast... >By the way, how did you find www.ruby-lang.org? >I've never announced it. Currently, it's mere alias to the >http://www.netlab.co.jp/ruby/. I was browsing a Ruby page: (http://www.goto.info.waseda.ac.jp/~fukusima/ruby/index-e.html) and saw the sheep. When I clicked on it (I always click on sheep!) I was transported to www.ruby-lang.org where another sheep was waiting at the bottom! Actually it would be nice if we could see them all side by side. And... I'm not sure you want to give people a choice or a vote anyway. We might all agree about the most advanced Ruby language features but never agree about the animal ;-) PS: Whatever the animal I think it is a great idear to select one icon and make it the standard. I also suggest we standardize a short ALT= "text" tag to go with it. And of course www.ruby-lang.org is a great idea. -Francois- ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com