The Ranting Rubyists
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The Ranting Rubyists
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Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#2If these Ruby bloggers got together and coded instead with the time they take to write and edit these posts to nowhere, they might come up with something pretty cool.
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#3If these Ruby bloggers got together and coded instead with the time they take to write and edit these posts to nowhere, they might come up with something pretty cool.
They can't match expectations.
Violent discussions, even with name-calling and everything, is very common in open source projects. Look at Linux, BSD, etc. There will always be a clash of egos. That might even be motivational for the mud slingers, to prove their point.
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#4But who wants to spend time contributing when there’s no money to be made or fame left to be had?
Yeah, who would? Open source is not about altruism. It's about either money or ego. If there are neither of those to be had, what's the point?
However, there is plenty of money and ego left to be had in the Ruby community. The last few years have been about "hey, programming can be fun." Most of us knew this already, but some people assumed that Java was all there was (thanks to JavaSchools). The Ruby community, I think, made it OK to use non-Java languages and still be taken seriously. But with that out of the way, it's time to get serious. It's time to fix the ruby's memory leaks. It's time to tighten up the libraries. People who work on this will get money and fame, trust me.
I have been doing Perl for a long time. Even though I keep hearing that it's a dead language, I know for a fact that there is plenty of fame to go around for library authors and people that work on the core. So there is no need to leave the Ruby community if you want fame and want to use Ruby. (And if you don't like Ruby, why not give Perl a try ;)
(I should also point out that it took the Perl community almost 10 years to get a really solid implementation that didn't leak memory (it took until 5.10.0). The Ruby community has a lot of work ahead of them.)
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#5I'm going to sidestep ranting about ranting about ranting about Ruby. The linked article seems very common-sense to me. But then, I never was much of one for ego-contests. I did however find something worth discussing in the blog post. Let me quote:
For myself, I’ve been learning to program with a language that doesn’t make me want to cry. I remember doing C++ and Java homework in CS classes in college; I do believe I have post-traumatic Java syndrome. It’s unbelievable even to me that I have dared to get into programming again. But Ruby is making it easy; even fun. I’m happy to code with it, and I’m happy to be enjoying the amenities of the lifestyle it has provided for us.
These sorts of experiences give me hope for the future of this profession. I firmly believe that the culture of good ol' boys' clubs and bondage-and-discipline programming languages are fettering access to the minds and talents of too many promising individuals. It's a crying shame.
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#6I’ve been a rubyist for three weeks now and it’s my turn to rant.
No, it isn't.
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#7[deleted]
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#8I'm going to sidestep ranting about ranting about ranting about Ruby. The linked article seems very common-sense to me. But then, I never was much of one for ego-contests. I did however find something worth discussing in the blog post. Let me quote: For myself, I’ve been learning to program with a language that doesn’t make me want to cry. I remember doing C++ and Java homework in CS classes in college; I do believe…
"These sorts of experiences give me hope for the future of this profession. I firmly believe that the culture of good ol' boys' clubs and bondage-and-discipline programming languages are fettering access to the minds and talents of too many promising individuals. It's a crying shame."
Oh, geez. Melodramatic, much?
I know it's antithetical around these parts, but I like C++. If you want to talk about beauty, there's beauty in OO design. There's beauty in type safety. And there's most definitely beauty in a language that will make correctness guarantees at compile time. But then again, I've been using C++ long enough to have some perspective. I remember when Java was the silver bullet; now it's Ruby. This too shall pass.
Most of the complaints that I hear about C++ come from inexperienced programmers, and most of those complaints boil down to "I don't understand it". That's fine, and to be expected -- I didn't understand anything either, when I first started. The tragic mistake comes when you begin to assume that type-safety, encapsulation, access control, and other "bondage-and-discipline" features of the language were put there simply to make your life more difficult.
There were (and are), talented C++ programmers, and I think it's possible that some of them know what they were doing.
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#9I'm going to sidestep ranting about ranting about ranting about Ruby. The linked article seems very common-sense to me. But then, I never was much of one for ego-contests. I did however find something worth discussing in the blog post. Let me quote: For myself, I’ve been learning to program with a language that doesn’t make me want to cry. I remember doing C++ and Java homework in CS classes in college; I do believe…
Great eye to notice that - I remember the same sort of nightmares with C++ (not so much Java).
Bottom line is that things are getting much better these days.
Re: The Ranting Rubyists
#10I'm going to sidestep ranting about ranting about ranting about Ruby. The linked article seems very common-sense to me. But then, I never was much of one for ego-contests. I did however find something worth discussing in the blog post. Let me quote: For myself, I’ve been learning to program with a language that doesn’t make me want to cry. I remember doing C++ and Java homework in CS classes in college; I do believe…
A promising individual will seek out a more expressive language if that's what they're looking for.