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anti-advocacy advocacy

Martin DeMello

9/11/2006 6:34:00 AM

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/adv...

Interesting read, and most of the points he makes are very relevant to
the ruby community.

martin
24 Answers

William Crawford

9/11/2006 9:23:00 AM

0

Martin DeMello wrote:
> http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/adv...
>
> Interesting read, and most of the points he makes are very relevant to
> the ruby community.
>
> martin

2 words: "Vocal Minority."

Yes, in every situation, there were very vocal people who will speak
their minds and give their highly ego-centric opinions. The fact that
it's hard or impossible to hear anyone else over them doesn't mean they
are right or in the majority.

I'll even go as far as to say he's fallen into his own trap. He
-expects- people to advocate, and sees that in everything that happens.
His Perl linked-lists example is the perfect example. He expects people
to think he's advocating and would write his FAQ accordingly. The FAQ
writer (Avi) was shocked that he thought this way. The ML/Perl Typing
example is another great one. The question "But what's wrong with the
way Perl does it?" can be re-worded as "How is it better than Perl's
way?" This is not advocacy, or expectation of advocacy, but a simple
comparison to what the user already knows: Perl's way.

And the last reason for this being the Vocal Minority... Why would you
try to spread the word about something if you were -not- advocating it?
(Or trying to persuade people not to use it, I suppose.) You wouldn't.
So expectation of advocacy in a blog or presentation is not unrealistic.
You have a -reason- to be letting others know about the item, and it's
probably that you like it and want others to use it/know about it also.

I agree about the sports fans, though. But I think it's a different
reason. Fans don't pick their teams on logic. It's cultural and
emotional. And in order to enjoy it fully, they heavily invest
themselves in these emotional ties. They gain nothing from complacency
and everything from zealotry. Expect them to truly care when they
answer surveys about their sport. Even if there's no logic in the
caring.

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Florian Frank

9/11/2006 11:01:00 AM

0

William Crawford wrote:
> Fans don't pick their teams on logic. It's cultural and emotional.

Yeah, that's so totally different from why programmers chose their
favorite programming language.

--
Florian Frank

Robert Klemme

9/11/2006 11:44:00 AM

0

On 11.09.2006 08:34, Martin DeMello wrote:
> http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/adv...
>
> Interesting read, and most of the points he makes are very relevant to
> the ruby community.

Just to throw in my 0.02 EUR... Although there is some advocacy of the
kind that Mark describes going on in here I also find that - compared to
other forums - the percentage of reasonable comments is higher. (IOW:
since Ruby is The Light, its community is as well. :-))

Kind regards

robert

Hal E. Fulton

9/11/2006 1:53:00 PM

0

William Crawford wrote:
>
> I agree about the sports fans, though. But I think it's a different
> reason. Fans don't pick their teams on logic. It's cultural and
> emotional. And in order to enjoy it fully, they heavily invest
> themselves in these emotional ties. They gain nothing from complacency
> and everything from zealotry. Expect them to truly care when they
> answer surveys about their sport. Even if there's no logic in the
> caring.
>

Sometimes I wonder if people exercise logic in their choice
of software tools, or in any other area of life.

Hal

William Crawford

9/11/2006 5:30:00 PM

0

Tom Allison wrote:
> I think you missed a point he was trying to make about the FAQ. If you
> answer with only, "Linked Lists are not required" then you risk a
> conclusing that Perl is bad because it is incapable of doing a simple
> task like linked lists. It's a legitimate defensive position to take.

No, I got the point... I was merely commenting on his reason vs the
FAQ-writer's reason. They ended up in the same place, but the
FAQ-writer was surprised at his reasoning.

> What is Ruby's position to the question, "Is it fast?". Is the answer
> a simple, "No" or is it more to the effect of "Ruby is fast enough in
> production but even faster in development"? I've typically heard the
> second answer.
>
> Simple benchmarking shows Ruby to be considerably slower than Perl --
> for
> me. Is it fast enough? When my development logs in rails says I can
> hit 300 pages / second it's fast enough -- for me.
>
>>And the last reason for this being the Vocal Minority... Why would you
>>try to spread the word about something if you were -not- advocating it?
>>(Or trying to persuade people not to use it, I suppose.) You wouldn't.
>>So expectation of advocacy in a blog or presentation is not unrealistic.
>>You have a -reason- to be letting others know about the item, and it's
>>probably that you like it and want others to use it/know about it also.
>
> Because it has some interesting features, fast development, and may
> prove
> to be something really worthwhile. Developers should be aware of what
> else is on the horizon that people are excited about.
>
> But I'm not going to risk advocating it in a production environment with
> over a million dollars a day passing through it. Not until I have a
> *LOT* more personal experience with the details.

Eh, I don't get where you were going here. You are saying you DO
advocate people learn/learn about Ruby outside of a work environment.
Blogs are often outside of a work environment also. But that actually
has nothing to do with the fact that if you write in a blog, you are
telling other people about something with little or no expectation of a
response. This is advocating. (Or the opposite, of course.) Nobody
makes wikipedia-entry type blog posts that have no bias. People do,
however, ask and answer questions with no bias when asked in a
conversation. (On the internet or off, doesn't matter.)

(I hope the torches are locked up...) I don't yet advocate Ruby for
anything. I don't know it well enough. But if asked, I would explain
that most Ruby programmers enjoy programming Ruby more than any other
language, and feel they are a -lot- more productive at it. I have no
proof, and I don't feel this way personally (yet, anyhow) but I can say
this totally non-biased. If I made a blog post, I am not answering
someone's question but actively seeking to give my opinion on it. There
would be no point in a blog post telling what others think that I don't
have enough experience in myself.

But then, IANAB. I don't blog. Maybe I totally misunderstand the alure
of blogging and it's actually just a place to beat your chest and
pretend you're wonderful. (I sure hope not, because that says bad
things about all of society.) Maybe they do just write to be read, and
don't care what they're saying. Totally possible.

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Chad Perrin

9/11/2006 9:18:00 PM

0

On Mon, Sep 11, 2006 at 08:45:35PM +0900, Robert Klemme wrote:
> On 11.09.2006 08:34, Martin DeMello wrote:
> >http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/adv...
> >
> >Interesting read, and most of the points he makes are very relevant to
> >the ruby community.
>
> Just to throw in my 0.02 EUR... Although there is some advocacy of the
> kind that Mark describes going on in here I also find that - compared to
> other forums - the percentage of reasonable comments is higher. (IOW:
> since Ruby is The Light, its community is as well. :-))

. . as opposed to The Heat, which conjures all the wrong notions.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.ap... ]
"It's just incredible that a trillion-synapse computer could actually
spend Saturday afternoon watching a football game." - Marvin Minsky

Tom Allison

9/11/2006 10:12:00 PM

0

William Crawford wrote:

> But then, IANAB. I don't blog.

Blind leading the blind... I don't blog either!!!! :)

John Johnson

9/14/2006 2:30:00 PM

0

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 08:56:18 -0400, Francis Cianfrocca
<garbagecat10@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/11/06, Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/adv...
>>
>> Interesting read, and most of the points he makes are very relevant to
>> the ruby community.
>>
> It actually was somewhat interesting. It goes without saying that you
> get a
> lot of advantages if you can induce other people to see things your way.

Very interesting read, indeed.

One point that adovacy of anything computer related has going against it
is most of the people in "IT" are weinies, with a deficit of social skills
(myself included). Not everyone, but a disproportinate number.

Advocacy is most influential to me when it is presented as "This is why I
like ..." (after I ask), rather than "You should ..." Those "shoulds" are
the mark of a zealot.

Regards,
JJ


--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera... That
still isn't quite what I want, and it's slow too.

Jeremy Henty

9/14/2006 3:50:00 PM

0

On 2006-09-14, John Johnson <johnatl@mac.com> wrote:

> Advocacy is most influential to me when it is presented as "This is
> why I like ..." (after I ask), rather than "You should ..."

I think the *most* influential advocacy goes "If *your* needs include
.... then *this* will meet your needs because ...". The person you're
targeting probably doesn't care in the least what you like or why you
like it, they just want to know if it will yield value for them.

Regards,

Jeremy Henty

Tom Allison

9/15/2006 10:48:00 AM

0

Jeremy Henty wrote:
> On 2006-09-14, John Johnson <johnatl@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Advocacy is most influential to me when it is presented as "This is
>> why I like ..." (after I ask), rather than "You should ..."
>
> I think the *most* influential advocacy goes "If *your* needs include
> ... then *this* will meet your needs because ...". The person you're
> targeting probably doesn't care in the least what you like or why you
> like it, they just want to know if it will yield value for them.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jeremy Henty
>

Doesn't advocacy == marketing ?