Re: How's ruby compare to it older brother python

I agree with you that a number of the people who ask these type of questions
are probably newcomers who haven't done any research.  A number are also
probably just trying to pick a fight.  I also agree that there is nothing
wrong with being annoyed and tired of these type of questions.  Still I fail
to understand how not answering their question and criticizing these type of
questions accomplishes anything.  If they are trying to pick a fight then by
arguing with them you are just giving them exactly what they want.  If they
are newbies,who in many cases don't know any netiquette, you may put them
off the language all together.  In fact newbies should be like gold to us
since the Ruby community is small.  Many of these guys may still be deciding
between the two languages.  We should be as encouraging to them as humanly
possible.

I also don't see how criticizing the questioner is going to deter anybody
else from doing the same thing.  If the type of person that asks this
quesiton is too lazy to do research then he won't know what happened in the
past on the newsgroup, so he won't know that the last guy who asked the
question was flamed and he will just do the same thing over again.  This
will just result in another long thread that everybody supposedly hates.
The only advantage to venting your frustration is it makes you feel better.

Also aren't the people who criticize the posters also being extremely
repetitive.  After all criticizing a person because he hasn't read the faq
is something that's been done thousands of times since the beginning of
usenet.  So why repeat the same old thing.

Here is a simple way to solve the whole problem:

Create a canned response that contains links to all the discussion in the
archives about this including this thread.  Also links to any relevant FAQ,
websites, WIKI's etc.  Also indicate to the person gently in the canned
response that this question has been answered extensively and send them a
link to the netiquette for this newsgroup (which I don't think has been
explicitly written up) which will explain that this question is
inappropriate and why.  Finally let one person send this message to the
questioner and make it part of the netiquette that nobody else responds so
that the thread dies out.  This is probably the most efficient solution to
the problem in terms of time, energy and thread length.  It also nicer than
flaming or criticizing and less repetitive.

-----Original Message-----
From: James Britt [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 11:14 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: How's ruby compare to it older brother python


Dan Doel wrote:
> I'm not saying the topic isn't appropriate. I don't mind the topic, and I
find
> comparisons between languages interesting, and enjoy reading them. But,
> looking around at ruby talk, I found clear Python vs. Ruby threads fom:

> Apr 26, 2004 (this one)
>
> Mar 28, 2004
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/95984
>
> Feb  1, 2004
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/91151
>
> I don't know that Python and Ruby change so fast that they need to be
> discussed anew every month.


That was my motivation for assembling this page a few months ago:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/RubyEyeForThePythonGuy.html

This topic is a permathread, and while it is relevant and interesting,
it is also, for many people on this list, all too familiar.  I think
most people can learn what they want to know by following the links on
that page and reading the previous mailing list discussions, both here
and on comp.lang.python.

 > I just think that maybe it'd be good to gather together some stuff
 > from the  archives and elsewhere so that "the answer" can just be
 > referenced. It'd cut  down on the "Python is less OO than Ruby." "No
 > it's not, and besides Ruby is  less functional." "No it's not..."

Such pages have existed for some time now, but the people creating and
perpetuating this discussion are, by and large, newcomers who haven't
bothered to (or don't care to) look for such resources.

James