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comp.lang.ruby

Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity

Thursday

12/28/2004 10:11:00 AM

I think Ruby's popularity is growing, but I can't help but wonder what
we can do to accelerate its adoption.

I think we've all seen superior technologies go extinct due to bad
marketing/perception--sadly, perception can be more important than
reality at times.

I think at a minimum, we need these:

1. a more formal release process--this could be as simple as documenting
what level of testing goes into changes to the stable vs dev branches
before they are committed to CVS.

2. a bug tracking system where we can report and view bugs--bugzilla is
overkill, maybe something simpler like trac should be considered.

3. last but not least, online docs on Ruby's primary website (not
3rd-party websites) that is similar to those provided by PostgreSQL and
Python. Maybe we can volunteer to create 'official' ruby docs to be
hosted on ruby's primary website. Preferably using a popular
documentation format that does not use frames like these:

http://python.or...
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/interactive/...

When ruby's primary website lists ruby 1.4.6 docs for download and says
ruby 1.6 docs are not yet ready (as of Dec 28, 2004), it can give the
wrong impression about Ruby's current pace of activity:
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/200...

This is particularly sad and misleading because matz, nobu, shugo and
many others are very actively working on improving ruby daily (we can
see this in the daily cvs commits). And it doesn't provide any clues to
newcomers/evaluators about the vibrant ruby community that is
frantically creating new ruby projects to rubyforge.

Anyone else think these few changes can make a big difference in how
ruby is perceived, and consequently chosen over other languages?
194 Answers

Eustaquio Rangel de Oliveira Jr.

12/28/2004 10:21:00 AM

0

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi!

| I think Ruby's popularity is growing, but I can't help but wonder what
| we can do to accelerate its adoption.

I'm reading, learning and writing some stuff about Ruby now. I think this
can make more people know and use it, but I think we don't need to worry so
much about make it so popular.

Of course, will be cool to people use there, but I already saw some
languages that said "hey, let's become a really hype" and

a) their community became fragmented and confuse.
b) the language itself became confuse.

So, I think the way it's going it's perfect, steping on solid ground and
moving very solid. People will know about that, on a way or another. :-)

Best regards,

- ----------------------------
Eustáquio "TaQ" Rangel
eustaquiorangel@yahoo.com
http://b...
Usuário GNU/Linux no. 224050
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Miles Keaton

12/28/2004 11:13:00 AM

0

> online docs on Ruby's primary website (not
> 3rd-party websites) that is similar to those provided by PostgreSQL and
> Python. Maybe we can volunteer to create 'official' ruby docs to be
> hosted on ruby's primary website.
> When ruby's primary website lists ruby 1.4.6 docs for download and says
> ruby 1.6 docs are not yet ready (as of Dec 28, 2004), it can give the
> wrong impression about Ruby's current pace of activity:
> http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/200...


I agree that as I was getting into Ruby, one of the big turn-offs was
that it always looked like an abandoned project!

Even just two days ago, I went to RubyCentral.org (the people that put
on the Ruby Conference and have the Ruby Codefest Grant program) --
offering to make a financial contribution, and what do I get from
their "contact us" link?
http://www.rubycentral.org/cgi-bin/submit.r... -- 404 not found

It seems for MOST Ruby-users, Ruby is a hobby, a curiosity, something
to learn to learn "another language". Well-meaning people set up a
helpful website, but when their day job takes over their life, the
hobby project gets abandoned.

Links of Ruby websites always seem unfinished and ugly.

Rails is encouraging : http://www.rubyon...

I hope there are more people able to follow-through on their interest in Ruby.
I hope people can collaborate to make a few GREAT Ruby websites,
instead of dozens of unfinished broken ones.
... also ...
I hope Ruby Central Inc becomes a non-profit so some companies and
people can make a tax-deductible contribution to Ruby development.
It would be amazing what one full-time Ruby "teacher and evangelist"
could do if they had good webdesign skills.
I hope Pragmatic Programmers keep writing great books on Ruby, and are
financially rewarded enough to encourage others to do the same.

Neil Stevens

12/28/2004 11:35:00 AM

0

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:10:42 +0000, Thursday wrote:

> I think Ruby's popularity is growing, but I can't help but wonder what
> we can do to accelerate its adoption.

Why, what do you hope to achieve?

> I think we've all seen superior technologies go extinct due to bad
> marketing/perception--sadly, perception can be more important than
> reality at times.

The technologies that went extinct were tied to companies that died or
abandoned them. There is no danger of that with Ruby.

So if this is the only reason to worry about adoption, instead of just
improving Ruby for ourselves, I think it's wasted effort.

Remember this, too: the more useful Ruby is for those who use it, the more
useful Ruby is for those who would use it.

--
Neil Stevens - neil@hakubi.us
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who
are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
-- Albert Einstein(?)

David Garamond

12/28/2004 1:19:00 PM

0

Thursday wrote:
> I think Ruby's popularity is growing, but I can't help but wonder what
> we can do to accelerate its adoption.

More O'Reilly books please :-) There are currently 30 or so (or is it
100?) for Perl, probably 10 for Python, and only 1-2 for Ruby.

Getting published by O'Reilly is nice because: a) it's one of the most
famous, so it becomes sort of a barometer; b) Safari; c) short copyright
period, so who knows in 5 years we will have several free Ruby books
available.

So please write for O'Reilly, or write to O'Reilly requesting more Ruby
books. There are lots of topics that can be covered and I think it has
been discussed in this list fairly recently.

Regards,
dave

T. Onoma

12/28/2004 1:23:00 PM

0

On Tuesday 28 December 2004 06:36 am, Neil Stevens wrote:
| On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:10:42 +0000, Thursday wrote:
| > I think Ruby's popularity is growing, but I can't help but wonder what
| > we can do to accelerate its adoption.
|
| Why, what do you hope to achieve?
|
| > I think we've all seen superior technologies go extinct due to bad
| > marketing/perception--sadly, perception can be more important than
| > reality at times.
|
| The technologies that went extinct were tied to companies that died or
| abandoned them. There is no danger of that with Ruby.
|
| So if this is the only reason to worry about adoption, instead of just
| improving Ruby for ourselves, I think it's wasted effort.
|
| Remember this, too: the more useful Ruby is for those who use it, the more
| useful Ruby is for those who would use it.

| --
| Neil Stevens - neil@hakubi.us
| "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who
| are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
|                                                 -- Albert Einstein(?)

How ironic that your quote essentially contradicts you.

T.

Alexander Kellett

12/28/2004 1:34:00 PM

0

On Dec 28, 2004, at 2:22 PM, trans. (T. Onoma) wrote:
> | Remember this, too: the more useful Ruby is for those who use it,
> the more
> | useful Ruby is for those who would use it.
>
> | --
> | Neil Stevens - neil@hakubi.us
> | "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people
> who
> | are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
> |                                                 -- Albert Einstein(?)
>
> How ironic that your quote essentially contradicts you.

actually i find it ironic that u find irony in something
that is so obviously non ironic! :P. i would have say that
in this case hyping a language is the evil of which is spoken
and the email from neil the appropriate counter action.

regards
Alex

dblack

12/28/2004 2:09:00 PM

0

Stefan Scholl

12/28/2004 2:10:00 PM

0

On 2004-12-28 12:34:56, Neil Stevens wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:10:42 +0000, Thursday wrote:
>> I think Ruby's popularity is growing, but I can't help but wonder what
>> we can do to accelerate its adoption.
>
> Why, what do you hope to achieve?

That way it would be more likely to be able to use Ruby at work.

Neil Stevens

12/28/2004 4:28:00 PM

0

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:22:46 +0900, trans. (T. Onoma) wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 December 2004 06:36 am, Neil Stevens wrote:

> | --
> | Neil Stevens - neil@hakubi.us
> | "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who
> | are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
> |                                                 -- Albert Einstein(?)
>
> How ironic that your quote essentially contradicts you.

That's only true if you think people who like C++ and Python are evil.

That the perl users are evil goes without saying, though. :-)

--
Neil Stevens - neil@hakubi.us
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who
are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
-- Albert Einstein(?)

gabriele renzi

12/28/2004 4:34:00 PM

0

Thursday ha scritto:
:
>
> 1. a more formal release process--this could be as simple as documenting
> what level of testing goes into changes to the stable vs dev branches
> before they are committed to CVS.

just my 2cents on this:
I think this is really a worthwhile goal.
I'd like to have a slightly more formal process like
- set a not huge timing for the each .point release (i.e. 4 months). I'd
like this to be short, pointing people to 'stable snapshot' does not
give the same feeling that "use 1.8.3".
- Put someone in charge of it.
- After a fixed period (i.e. after 2 months) declare real feature freeze
(some stuff could change in this period, think of
RSS::Parser/Maker,cvs.rb,Tk changes) and just fix bugs.
- Let hackers mess up the next version in peace safely :)

Well, this mostly just requires a release manager, as matz pointed out
some time ago. Noone candidate him/herself, anyway. Would someone do it
now, please? :)

> 2. a bug tracking system where we can report and view bugs--bugzilla is
> overkill, maybe something simpler like trac should be considered.

the bug tracking system ATM is here:
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?gr...
probably this need more visibility.
Would it be possible to add a link on the main rubyforge page with
something like "report a bug in Ruby"?
Could this also be put on the main ruby page?