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Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

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Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#101

Post by treeman79 »

dluan wrote: post #57
twic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A book which stops you learning Ruby is in fact an excellent book.

I've been trying to figure out at which point ruby turned from hero into villain, but I feel like it's more a generation gap rather than some series of acute moments.

When a proof of concept app hits a multi-million+ requests a day. Suddenly your large monolith app that has been fine for years falls apart.

So you rush out and higher 10 react developers, 10 go developers, and 10 support engineers to try and write a micro service replacement while keeping the ruby app alive long enough to finish the rewrite. Oh and an elixir developer somehow managed to sneak in.

Meanwhile your original 2 Ruby developers moved on, and their replacements are treated like dirt since Ruby Is on the way out... for a few years.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#102

Post by lquist »

thom wrote: post #12

I've always felt this was a singular achievement, one which perfectly captured the spirit of its author, the community he inhabited, and a particular zeitgeist in programming and on the internet. The need for various other authors to attempt to replicate it for other languages by creating rambling, twee books with wacky titles and comic characters of their own, I've frankly found a bit sad and underwhelming. It's a b…

Agreed. Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby is nothing short of literature.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#103

Post by antod »

treeman79 wrote: post #98
uncomputation wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really is a pretentiousness held in a group of language zealots. Can’t tell if this is ironic or not, but Rubyists are pretty well known as the friendliest out of all language communities, and have been for over a decade now

We had the rock star solo developer phase. Thankfully we grew out of it.

I don't think it was growing out of it so much as a lot of them went and chased the new shiny over at NodeJS.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#104

Post by [deleted] »

djur wrote: post #90
booleandilemma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before stumbling upon Why’s Guide my only experience with programming literature had been dry textbooks. The whimsy was a welcome relief. Someone with your taste would be better off reading The Art of Computer Programming though.

TAOCP isn't exactly a laugh riot but Knuth is kind of known for his sense of humor.

[deleted]

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#105

Post by devilduck »

bdowling wrote: post #46
mwcremer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire: https://garfieldminusgarfield.net (Although I suppose a case could be made for it still being "empty.")

I prefer `lasagnacat` for my existential/surreal Garfield riffs. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2AQkHXNVA-w9FA1m9VqO7A My favorite may be this one, a one-hour single-take monologue about finding the meaning of life in a Garfield strip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw

You're allowed to like both things

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#106

Post by antod »

cutler wrote: post #56
ppod wrote: post #32

Aside from the book, this brings back all those fuzzy feelings of learning ruby. Boolean functions end in ?, in-place transformations end in ! each, unless. It's just such a beautiful language.

Yes. In a perfect world Ruby would have left Python in the dust and enterprise software would be written in Clojure.

> In a perfect world Ruby would have left Python in the dust

It pretty much did, but then Rails and Ruby's hype cycle faded a bit, and Python kept going, recovered and found new niches.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#107

Post by treeman79 »

antod wrote: post #103
treeman79 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had the rock star solo developer phase. Thankfully we grew out of it.

I don't think it was growing out of it so much as a lot of them went and chased the new shiny over at NodeJS.

That does explain so much about the node community.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#108

Post by [deleted] »

valbaca wrote: post #22
thom wrote: post #12

I've always felt this was a singular achievement, one which perfectly captured the spirit of its author, the community he inhabited, and a particular zeitgeist in programming and on the internet. The need for various other authors to attempt to replicate it for other languages by creating rambling, twee books with wacky titles and comic characters of their own, I've frankly found a bit sad and underwhelming. It's a b…

This about sums up most Monty Python and Rick & Morty references as well. A lot of nerd/hacker culture falls into this kind of recognition of unique humor and wit, then squeezing every little drop of joy out of it until it's as empty as a Garfield cartoon.

[deleted]

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#109

Post by joshspankit »

bdowling wrote: post #46
mwcremer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire: https://garfieldminusgarfield.net (Although I suppose a case could be made for it still being "empty.")

I prefer `lasagnacat` for my existential/surreal Garfield riffs. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2AQkHXNVA-w9FA1m9VqO7A My favorite may be this one, a one-hour single-take monologue about finding the meaning of life in a Garfield strip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw

Did not think I would but I did, infact, watch the entire monologue.

It made a lasting mark.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#110

Post by cambalache »

dialamac wrote: post #97
cambalache wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complains about the "pretentiousness" of Ruby developers (Out all the languages!). Proceeds to mention Nim. Rub his mustache, drink his kombucha a put another vinyl.

I don’t see your point. A large base of Nim users are looking for a pragmatic alternative to the C/C++ family without the aggressive anti-modernism of Go. Nim is certainly not the only player in this realm, but far as I know there isn’t a “Nim Drama” Twitter or tumblr. The drama queen stereotype of Ruby and Rails is very well earned on a repeated basis. All the communities have had their dramas but Ruby and Rust to a…

> A large base of Nim users are looking for a pragmatic alternative to the C/C++ family without the aggressive anti-modernism of Go.

You guys make this too easy. Unless it was sarcasm, so whoosh me, and chapeau!

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