From: Gennady Date: 2004-05-01T00:20:09+09:00 Subject: Re: Opportunities and pitfalls; was "Introducing myself - Sascha Ebach" It looks like you spent more time to compose this letter than to learn Ruby ;-). In any case, welcome. A few days definitely is not enough to fully master the language. I bet it had taken you a way more than 2 days to become proficient in Java. Talking about Ruby, even after almost 3 years of using it, every now and then I find out something about it that still amazes me. And by the way, I've been earning my daily bread with C++ for more than 10 years, and now (sometimes) with Ruby ;-) On a practical note, if you are looking for available Ruby software, good places to start are Ruby Application Archive (RAA) at http://raa.ruby-lang.org and Ruby Forge at http://rubyforge.org Source Forge is also hosting some Ruby projects. Good GUIs choices for you to look at might be fxruby (http://www.fxruby.org, binding for the Fox library) and wxRuby (http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl). Gennady. Mike Calder wrote: > A word of warning from a potential friend. Please don't take this negatively, > because I think you have something, and I'd like to help. If you can read > through to the end, there's a modest proposal. > > It's too late and too early for you to start evangelising Ruby. That's a > shame, because right now there's a major opportunity for grabbing hearts and > minds. "Too late" because Ruby has grown beyond the early days when a > product can be forgiven holes, and "too early" because it still has some big > ones - getting newbies interested will leave a lot of them dismissing Ruby > unnecessarily. > > I've only been using Ruby a few days, so I'm perfect to point out a few > things; I've no emotion invested, and am almost (but not quite) totally > ignorant about Ruby. > > The great opportunity is that I and a lot of people just like me have just > realised (or are about to realise) that they have a serious need, and Ruby > might be just it. But I need to be sure. That means I need to see some > things about Ruby before I jump. They may exist, but I can't see them, and > that itself makes the point. > > I'm a Java programmer, and am sitting on a product with world-wide usage and > over a quarter-million lines of code. I'm deeply worried, after the Sun/ > MediocreSoft rapprochement, about the potential future of Java. That's a > shame, because for all its faults, Java is the best production language I've > come across in over thirty years practical experience in the industry - and > don't bother trying to engage me in a discussion over that; I know it's a > personal evaluation. > > However I am sufficiently worried about the future of Java to consider > alternatives, and after looking around, Ruby seems the best bet out of a > narrow field. The criteria are: > > * Proper OO. > * Write once, deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale. > * Open Source with unrestrictive licence. > * Comprehensive functionality, good libraries, easy extensibility. > > Now you ruby experts know that ruby is good for all this. My first point is, > however, that after looking at ruby in some detail for well over a full day, > I was reluctantly about to discard it as a possibility because it doesn't > support Unicode, and that or something like it is necessary for "Write once, > deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale". > > Yes, I know. But it took me two days to find out, and I *still* don't know > how to write or handle Unicode strings in ruby code. Or where to go to find > out. So, POINT 1. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, a current > features, capabilities, and extensions document. A central repository of > HOWTOs would be nice (how about one on how to write and handle Unicode in > Ruby? The world doesn't end in Japan and America.) > > Next point. To handle what I (and probably most Java programmers) want > requires a good, configurable, GUI. I'd heard of Tcl/Tk, but most of the > examples I'd seen were pretty simplistic and, how to say this politely, not > overdesigned. Some of what I read mentioned others. It's nice there's a > choice, but you can't make a choice without information. If you make the > wrong choice because of lack of information, by the time you realise, you may > have invested so much effort that you're stuck. I took a look at Fox for my > eval. So, POINT 2. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, some good > examples of how GUI coding can be done with different packages, and > INFORMATION about the different possible choices. Oh, and the GUI code comes > from another website? It's a separate product? You mean I have to install > *three* things? Ruby, the GUI toolkit, *then* the Ruby toolkit enabling > stuff? Where's the documentation? > > Finally (for this posting at least; it's too long already), distribution. > Windows users seem to have it nice; preconfigured downloadable distros. I > use Linux, so of course I'm happy to download fifty-eight different source > code tarballs from nineteen different websites for all the options I want, > and configure, make, and install each of them (in the correct order so as not > to muck up pre-requisites), *then* manually add links to put the libraries in > the right place for my particular Linux distro, then copy files all over the > place when it doesn't work. > > After all, that's what every Ruby hero has had to do over the years; that's > how they learnt how Ruby works. > > Naah. If I had any sense I'd have dumped this and gone on to something > productive days ago. > > 99% of the people you might want to attract would have; I suspect you've lost > a few already. We're not all sysprogs, and you need the ordinary joes as > well as the early adopters and enthusiasts. > > You need to have good packages for all the distros. Something like the Java > SDK and Runtime packages. A single file download and install that contains > *everything* (yes, Victoria, the GUI as well). OK, that means big files, but > disks are big these days, and install procs can have things called options. > Oh, and if you need to distribute applications to end-users (yes, those > mythical beasts *do* exist), you need a tool to generate customised runtime > install packages of Ruby and whatever extensions are needed (oh, and it needs > to be able to recognise already installed rubies and do deltas). > > Documentation and Distro packages. It looks to me that Ruby has some serious > good function and serious good technical people (and maybe a couple good > designers). There are a lot of interesting sounding people in the Who's Who. > Shame a lot of the links are broken. > > What Ruby needs is some thought to the process side and the needs of the > non-techie user. I'm an application programmer, but for my sins I've had to > do the marketing bit to persuade people to use my products, and that sort of > thing gives you a perspective; it's dirty work, but someone has to do it. I > think Ruby users at the moment are enthusiasts; if it's to grow, it needs a > bit more ease of use. > > I'd say Ruby has reached the position where it needs something like a Red Hat > (Ruby Turban?) to package it and represent it to the world. I'd be willing > to get involved in that. What do you think? > > On Friday 30 April 2004 00:34, Simon Strandgaard wrote: > >>Josef 'Jupp' Schugt wrote: >> >>>Simon Strandgaard wrote: >>> >>>>Sascha Ebach wrote: >> >>[snip] >> >> >>>>>And if not we could burst into a PHP meeting and try to convert >>>>>some ;) >>>> >>>>A ruby crusade :-) the history repeats itself. >>> >>>"crusade" is a hard word. I'd prefer calling it evangelization the >>>traditional Societas Jesu way >;-> Actually Sascha's idea reminds me >>>of what Greenpeace did in the past. >>> >>>Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who >>>don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists. >> >>Agree, we need to spread the word a bit more. >> >>Yesterday I went to the local library, and asked a guy looking at the >>computer books, what he was searching fore. He wanted to learn perl5! >>I of cause recommended him to learn Ruby (or secondary Python), >>but unfortunatly no books at the library. My local library seems only to >>buy bunches of Visual Basic books at the moment, which is unfortunate. If >>somehow we could infect some libraries with books about Ruby, it would be >>great. This is frustrating, any suggestions what to do? >> >>Also much more Ruby in the media would be an eye-opener. >> >>-- >>Simon Strandgaard > >