From: trevor andrade Date: 2004-05-01T06:47:22+09:00 Subject: 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:jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com] 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