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Re: [ANN] Instiki 0.10.0 - On The Rails

james_b

4/8/2005 2:03:00 PM

Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> <fanfares/>
>
> Ladies and gentlemen!
>
> It is a great pleasure for me to announce the release of version 0.10.0
> of Instiki, the most popular end-user application in the Ruby world.

Really? You're not just going by downloads, are you?


James
13 Answers

Christian Neukirchen

4/8/2005 3:28:00 PM

0

James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> writes:

> Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
>> <fanfares/>
>> Ladies and gentlemen!
>> It is a great pleasure for me to announce the release of version
>> 0.10.0 of Instiki, the most popular end-user application in the Ruby
>> world.
>
> Really? You're not just going by downloads, are you?

What else could be the most popular Ruby *application*?

> James
--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneuk...

Randy Kramer

4/8/2005 3:50:00 PM

0

> Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> > It is a great pleasure for me to announce the release of version 0.10.0
> > of Instiki, the most popular end-user application in the Ruby world.

(Sorry, misplaced the original announcement.)

I didn't notice anything in the announcement, so, is the (persistent) storage
still by some form of "persisted objects" (marshalling?) as opposed to, a
more ordinary file format (like plain text)?

Randy Kramer

james_b

4/8/2005 4:39:00 PM

0

Christian Neukirchen wrote:
> James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> writes:
>
>
>>Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
>>
>>><fanfares/>
>>>Ladies and gentlemen!
>>>It is a great pleasure for me to announce the release of version
>>>0.10.0 of Instiki, the most popular end-user application in the Ruby
>>>world.
>>
>>Really? You're not just going by downloads, are you?
>
>
> What else could be the most popular Ruby *application*?

I'm not making any claims; I'm wondering how you support yours.

James

james_b

4/8/2005 4:55:00 PM

0

Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> James Britt wrote:
>
>> Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
>>
>>> Instiki, the most popular end-user application in the Ruby world.
>>
>>
>> Really? You're not just going by downloads, are you?
>
>
> Of course not! I've just recently paid 123,456.00 USD for a worldwide
> market research of Ruby end-user applications, so noone can sue me for
> the misrepresentation of facts. :)
>
> Seriously though, is there another end-user Ruby application more
> popular than Instiki? Not counting development tools?


How would one know? And what is gained by claiming something for which
there is no objective means of proof or argument?


James

Hype is the new black

Randy Kramer

4/8/2005 4:56:00 PM

0

On Friday 08 April 2005 12:05 pm, Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> Randy Kramer wrote:
> >so, is the (persistent) storage
> >still by some form of "persisted objects" (marshalling?)
>
> Yes, it is still the same backend, albeit the handling of persistence
> layer is somewhat enhanced there.

Alexey,

Thanks!

Randy Kramer

james_b

4/9/2005 2:55:00 AM

0

Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> James Britt wrote:
>
>> How would one know?
>
>
> James,
>
> "Knowing" may be a strong word, but this:
> http://rubyforge.org/top/toplist.php?type... is an objective
> fact. I interpret it in a certain way, and I don't know any other fact
> that contradicts my current interpretation.

That pretty much sums things up.

> ...
> So, come on, let's have a popularity pissing context among Ruby end-user
> applications. We may actually learn something useful that way. Any takers?

This is the sort of thing Ruby can do without, but happens anyway.


James

Austin Ziegler

4/9/2005 1:25:00 PM

0

On Apr 8, 2005 10:59 PM, Alexey Verkhovsky <alex@verk.info> wrote:
> James Britt wrote:
> >> So, come on, let's have a popularity pissing context among Ruby
> >> end-user applications. We may actually learn something useful that
> >> way. Any takers?
> > This is the sort of thing Ruby can do without, but happens anyway.
> Why do you think it is such a bad thing?

Because it confuses popularity with quality.

-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
* Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca

David Heinemeier Hansson

4/9/2005 1:55:00 PM

0

>>>> So, come on, let's have a popularity pissing context among Ruby
>>>> end-user applications. We may actually learn something useful that
>>>> way. Any takers?
>>> This is the sort of thing Ruby can do without, but happens anyway.
>> Why do you think it is such a bad thing?
>
> Because it confuses popularity with quality.

The confusion would be a personal mistake, then. Alexey merely wrote
"most popular end-user application in the Ruby world", so he wasn't
taking part of any qualitative evaluation -- merely drawing a
reasonable interpretation of number downloads => largest reach => most
popular. I think that's a generally accepted chain of reasoning.

The record of the week with the most sales is said to be the most
popular one. That definition doesn't include the intensity of
popularity (user A buying both X and Y, but _enjoying_ the purchase of
X much more than Y), but the lack of resolution surely doesn't preclude
the use of popularity as defined above as a meaningful indicator.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://www.basec... -- Web-based Project Management
http://www.rubyon... -- Web-application framework for Ruby
http://www.loudthi... -- Broadcasting Brain

james_b

4/9/2005 2:46:00 PM

0

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:
>>>>> So, come on, let's have a popularity pissing context among Ruby
>>>>> end-user applications. We may actually learn something useful that
>>>>> way. Any takers?
>>>>
>>>> This is the sort of thing Ruby can do without, but happens anyway.
>>>
>>> Why do you think it is such a bad thing?
>>
>>
>> Because it confuses popularity with quality.
>
>
> The confusion would be a personal mistake, then. Alexey merely wrote
> "most popular end-user application in the Ruby world", so he wasn't
> taking part of any qualitative evaluation -- merely drawing a reasonable
> interpretation of number downloads => largest reach => most popular. I
> think that's a generally accepted chain of reasoning.

Perhaps, but if so, then simply citing the download figures should be
enough, rather than telling people how to interpret them.

(And it's disingenuous to dismiss the implicit association between
popularity and quality as perhaps a uniquely personal observation.
Surely people believe popularity indicates some sort of value, else why
would anyone bother citing it?)

>
> The record of the week with the most sales is said to be the most
> popular one. That definition doesn't include the intensity of popularity
> (user A buying both X and Y, but _enjoying_ the purchase of X much more
> than Y), but the lack of resolution surely doesn't preclude the use of
> popularity as defined above as a meaningful indicator.

Well, apples and oranges. Costs nothing to download an app and try it
out, see if it got any better than last time. I've downloaded Instiki a
few times, but still don't care for it. Meanwhile, there are other apps
I've down loaded once, they do exactly what I want, and I use them. No
need t go download it again and again.

(Out of curiosity, are the download numbers restricted to each current
version, or cumulative for all versions over time? )

Overall, what I find annoying about certain claims (and this is hardly
restricted to Ruby apps) is when an opinion or personal interpretation
is presented as some sort of objective truth, especially when it is just
as easy to cite observable data and trust people to be smart enough to
come to reasonable conclusions.


James

--

http://www.ru...
http://www.r...
http://catapult.rub...
http://orbjson.rub...
http://ooo4r.rub...
http://www.jame...

Glenn Parker

4/9/2005 4:17:00 PM

0

Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> Popularity (number of users), however, is important to me, because I
> want to help make Ruby a mainstream technology. Instiki success in that
> department tells us something.

Knowing how many people have downloaded an application gives you, at
best, an upper bound on the number of people who actually like and use
the application. You could add a little phone-home module that
generated real-time usage statistics, but that would be evil. :) A more
practical idea would be a simple poll, asking about what Ruby
applications are actually used, broken out by categories, e.g.
long-running servers vs. command-line or GUI tools vs. shared libraries.

My instinct says Instiki is downloaded frequently for three reasons, 1)
wikis are fairly self-contained, 2) wikis are interesting, yet easy to
understand, 3) Instiki promises a safe and zero-hassle installation.
So, people that are exploring Ruby see it and say, "OK, I know what a
wiki is, and it would be fun to play with one, but I don't want to mess
up my machine or get lost in some messy configuration scheme." The
question is, after they've played for an hour or two does it ever get
run again?

--
Glenn Parker | glenn.parker-AT-comcast.net | <http://www.tetrafoi...