From: Marek Janukowicz Date: 2004-03-30T08:19:25+09:00 Subject: Re: General observations On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 07:52:50 +0900, seth@cql.com wrote: > My take on this is slightly different. > > I don't believe that the difference in libraries is a great as it > sometimes appears to be. I believe that the biggest deficit is in > documentation. The documentation lags the libraries, and frequently by a > significant amount. This of course makes it difficult to use the > libraries. Furthermore, it makes it difficult to discover what libraries > are actually available. > > The improvements Greg sites are real and important. I do think that more > stress on _up to date_ documentation would be a great leap forward in > terms of acceptance of Ruby as a serious competitor. I couldn't agree more. The lack of good, up to date and thorough documentation is surely the major disadvantage of existing Ruby libraries. I hate the "you don't need the documentation, just read the source code" attitude a lot of library developers represent - if I need to read all the source code, I could write it by myself as well. I hope this attitude will change soon. Speaking of myself - before last release of my SWS library, after completing the code, I spent about 2 weeks writing the docs. I really hate that (most developers do, unfortunately), but my effort was greatly rewarded - most of the emails I received soon after the release stated the documentation as a strong point of the library. -- Marek Janukowicz