Introducing myself - Sascha Ebach

[Gennady]

It looks like you spent more time to compose this letter than to learn
Ruby ;-). In any case, welcome. A few days definitely is not enough to
fully master the language. I bet it had taken you a way more than 2 days
to become proficient in Java. Talking about Ruby, even after almost 3
years of using it, every now and then I find out something about it that
still amazes me. And by the way, I've been earning my daily bread with
C++ for more than 10 years, and now (sometimes) with Ruby ;-)

On a practical note, if you are looking for available Ruby software,
good places to start are Ruby Application Archive (RAA) at
http://raa.ruby-lang.org and Ruby Forge at http://rubyforge.org
Source Forge is also hosting some Ruby projects.

Good GUIs choices for you to look at might be fxruby
(http://www.fxruby.org, binding for the Fox library) and wxRuby
(http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl).

Gennady.

A word of warning from a potential friend. Please don't take this negatively,
because I think you have something, and I'd like to help. If you can read
through to the end, there's a modest proposal.

It's too late and too early for you to start evangelising Ruby. That's a
shame, because right now there's a major opportunity for grabbing hearts and
minds. "Too late" because Ruby has grown beyond the early days when a
product can be forgiven holes, and "too early" because it still has some big
ones - getting newbies interested will leave a lot of them dismissing Ruby
unnecessarily.

I've only been using Ruby a few days, so I'm perfect to point out a few
things; I've no emotion invested, and am almost (but not quite) totally
ignorant about Ruby.

The great opportunity is that I and a lot of people just like me have just
realised (or are about to realise) that they have a serious need, and Ruby
might be just it. But I need to be sure. That means I need to see some
things about Ruby before I jump. They may exist, but I can't see them, and
that itself makes the point.

I'm a Java programmer, and am sitting on a product with world-wide usage and
over a quarter-million lines of code. I'm deeply worried, after the Sun/
MediocreSoft rapprochement, about the potential future of Java. That's a
shame, because for all its faults, Java is the best production language I've
come across in over thirty years practical experience in the industry - and
don't bother trying to engage me in a discussion over that; I know it's a
personal evaluation.

However I am sufficiently worried about the future of Java to consider
alternatives, and after looking around, Ruby seems the best bet out of a
narrow field. The criteria are:

* Proper OO.
* Write once, deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale.
* Open Source with unrestrictive licence.
* Comprehensive functionality, good libraries, easy extensibility.

Now you ruby experts know that ruby is good for all this. My first point is,
however, that after looking at ruby in some detail for well over a full day,
I was reluctantly about to discard it as a possibility because it doesn't
support Unicode, and that or something like it is necessary for "Write once,
deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale".

Yes, I know. But it took me two days to find out, and I *still* don't know
how to write or handle Unicode strings in ruby code. Or where to go to find
out. So, POINT 1. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, a current
features, capabilities, and extensions document. A central repository of
HOWTOs would be nice (how about one on how to write and handle Unicode in
Ruby? The world doesn't end in Japan and America.)

Next point. To handle what I (and probably most Java programmers) want
requires a good, configurable, GUI. I'd heard of Tcl/Tk, but most of the
examples I'd seen were pretty simplistic and, how to say this politely, not
overdesigned. Some of what I read mentioned others. It's nice there's a
choice, but you can't make a choice without information. If you make the
wrong choice because of lack of information, by the time you realise, you may
have invested so much effort that you're stuck. I took a look at Fox for my
eval. So, POINT 2. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, some good
examples of how GUI coding can be done with different packages, and
INFORMATION about the different possible choices. Oh, and the GUI code comes
from another website? It's a separate product? You mean I have to install
*three* things? Ruby, the GUI toolkit, *then* the Ruby toolkit enabling
stuff? Where's the documentation?

Finally (for this posting at least; it's too long already), distribution.
Windows users seem to have it nice; preconfigured downloadable distros. I
use Linux, so of course I'm happy to download fifty-eight different source
code tarballs from nineteen different websites for all the options I want,
and configure, make, and install each of them (in the correct order so as not
to muck up pre-requisites), *then* manually add links to put the libraries in
the right place for my particular Linux distro, then copy files all over the
place when it doesn't work.

After all, that's what every Ruby hero has had to do over the years; that's
how they learnt how Ruby works.

Naah. If I had any sense I'd have dumped this and gone on to something
productive days ago.

99% of the people you might want to attract would have; I suspect you've lost
a few already. We're not all sysprogs, and you need the ordinary joes as
well as the early adopters and enthusiasts.

You need to have good packages for all the distros. Something like the Java
SDK and Runtime packages. A single file download and install that contains
*everything* (yes, Victoria, the GUI as well). OK, that means big files, but
disks are big these days, and install procs can have things called options.
Oh, and if you need to distribute applications to end-users (yes, those
mythical beasts *do* exist), you need a tool to generate customised runtime
install packages of Ruby and whatever extensions are needed (oh, and it needs
to be able to recognise already installed rubies and do deltas).

Documentation and Distro packages. It looks to me that Ruby has some serious
good function and serious good technical people (and maybe a couple good
designers). There are a lot of interesting sounding people in the Who's Who.
Shame a lot of the links are broken.

What Ruby needs is some thought to the process side and the needs of the
non-techie user. I'm an application programmer, but for my sins I've had to
do the marketing bit to persuade people to use my products, and that sort of
thing gives you a perspective; it's dirty work, but someone has to do it. I
think Ruby users at the moment are enthusiasts; if it's to grow, it needs a
bit more ease of use.

I'd say Ruby has reached the position where it needs something like a Red Hat
(Ruby Turban?) to package it and represent it to the world. I'd be willing
to get involved in that. What do you think?

Simon Strandgaard wrote:

[snip]


And if not we could burst into a PHP meeting and try to convert
some

A ruby crusade the history repeats itself.

"crusade" is a hard word. I'd prefer calling it evangelization the
traditional Societas Jesu way >;-> Actually Sascha's idea reminds me
of what Greenpeace did in the past.

Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who
don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists.

Agree, we need to spread the word a bit more.

Yesterday I went to the local library, and asked a guy looking at the
computer books, what he was searching fore. He wanted to learn perl5!
I of cause recommended him to learn Ruby (or secondary Python),
but unfortunatly no books at the library. My local library seems only to
buy bunches of Visual Basic books at the moment, which is unfortunate. If
somehow we could infect some libraries with books about Ruby, it would be
great. This is frustrating, any suggestions what to do?

Also much more Ruby in the media would be an eye-opener.

 

[Josh Huber]

I just wanted to comment on this part for a moment...I think most
would agree that improving documentation would be a good thing.

[...]

You need to have good packages for all the distros. Something like
the Java SDK and Runtime packages. A single file download and
install that contains *everything* (yes, Victoria, the GUI as well).
OK, that means big files, but disks are big these days, and install
procs can have things called options.

While you may this is a good thing about the Java install, this has to
be my number 1 irritation with Java. The installer which is not
integrated with your distribution. Fortunately, there are
distribution specific packages which work pretty well, but dealing
with the official release is such a pain!

IMHO, of course.

You are, however, the first person I've run into who actually LIKES
the java installation system...

 

[Jean-Hugues ROBERT]

Hi,

You are rightfully commenting about what I call "Packaging", as marketing
people call it: The nice box around the product. That includes:
- Documentation
- Install/Update
- Support service.

For whatever reason, after 20 years in the industry, I am pretty sure
that Packaging is one of the most difficult thing to do, based on the
quality of the results I observe.

Would you imagine a beautiful perfume in an ugly bottle ?
Yet it is what a lot of software is.

In french there is a saying:
"Qu'importe le flacon pourvu qu'on ai l'ivresse"
Which translate (poorly) into something like
"The bottle is irrelevant as long as you get drunk".

For sure most software developers are guys !

Yours,

Jean-Hugues

A word of warning from a potential friend. Please don't take this
negatively,
because I think you have something, and I'd like to help. If you can read
through to the end, there's a modest proposal.

It's too late and too early for you to start evangelising Ruby. That's a
shame, because right now there's a major opportunity for grabbing hearts and
minds. "Too late" because Ruby has grown beyond the early days when a
product can be forgiven holes, and "too early" because it still has some big
ones - getting newbies interested will leave a lot of them dismissing Ruby
unnecessarily.

I've only been using Ruby a few days, so I'm perfect to point out a few
things; I've no emotion invested, and am almost (but not quite) totally
ignorant about Ruby.

The great opportunity is that I and a lot of people just like me have just
realised (or are about to realise) that they have a serious need, and Ruby
might be just it. But I need to be sure. That means I need to see some
things about Ruby before I jump. They may exist, but I can't see them, and
that itself makes the point.

I'm a Java programmer, and am sitting on a product with world-wide usage and
over a quarter-million lines of code. I'm deeply worried, after the Sun/
MediocreSoft rapprochement, about the potential future of Java. That's a
shame, because for all its faults, Java is the best production language I've
come across in over thirty years practical experience in the industry - and
don't bother trying to engage me in a discussion over that; I know it's a
personal evaluation.

However I am sufficiently worried about the future of Java to consider
alternatives, and after looking around, Ruby seems the best bet out of a
narrow field. The criteria are:

* Proper OO.
* Write once, deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale.
* Open Source with unrestrictive licence.
* Comprehensive functionality, good libraries, easy extensibility.

Now you ruby experts know that ruby is good for all this. My first point is,
however, that after looking at ruby in some detail for well over a full day,
I was reluctantly about to discard it as a possibility because it doesn't
support Unicode, and that or something like it is necessary for "Write once,
deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale".

Yes, I know. But it took me two days to find out, and I *still* don't know
how to write or handle Unicode strings in ruby code. Or where to go to find
out. So, POINT 1. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, a current
features, capabilities, and extensions document. A central repository of
HOWTOs would be nice (how about one on how to write and handle Unicode in
Ruby? The world doesn't end in Japan and America.)

Next point. To handle what I (and probably most Java programmers) want
requires a good, configurable, GUI. I'd heard of Tcl/Tk, but most of the
examples I'd seen were pretty simplistic and, how to say this politely, not
overdesigned. Some of what I read mentioned others. It's nice there's a
choice, but you can't make a choice without information. If you make the
wrong choice because of lack of information, by the time you realise, you may
have invested so much effort that you're stuck. I took a look at Fox for my
eval. So, POINT 2. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, some good
examples of how GUI coding can be done with different packages, and
INFORMATION about the different possible choices. Oh, and the GUI code comes
from another website? It's a separate product? You mean I have to install
*three* things? Ruby, the GUI toolkit, *then* the Ruby toolkit enabling
stuff? Where's the documentation?

Finally (for this posting at least; it's too long already), distribution.
Windows users seem to have it nice; preconfigured downloadable distros. I
use Linux, so of course I'm happy to download fifty-eight different source
code tarballs from nineteen different websites for all the options I want,
and configure, make, and install each of them (in the correct order so as not
to muck up pre-requisites), *then* manually add links to put the libraries in
the right place for my particular Linux distro, then copy files all over the
place when it doesn't work.

After all, that's what every Ruby hero has had to do over the years; that's
how they learnt how Ruby works.

Naah. If I had any sense I'd have dumped this and gone on to something
productive days ago.

99% of the people you might want to attract would have; I suspect you've lost
a few already. We're not all sysprogs, and you need the ordinary joes as
well as the early adopters and enthusiasts.

You need to have good packages for all the distros. Something like the Java
SDK and Runtime packages. A single file download and install that contains
*everything* (yes, Victoria, the GUI as well). OK, that means big files, but
disks are big these days, and install procs can have things called options.
Oh, and if you need to distribute applications to end-users (yes, those
mythical beasts *do* exist), you need a tool to generate customised runtime
install packages of Ruby and whatever extensions are needed (oh, and it needs
to be able to recognise already installed rubies and do deltas).

Documentation and Distro packages. It looks to me that Ruby has some serious
good function and serious good technical people (and maybe a couple good
designers). There are a lot of interesting sounding people in the Who's
Who.
Shame a lot of the links are broken.

What Ruby needs is some thought to the process side and the needs of the
non-techie user. I'm an application programmer, but for my sins I've had to
do the marketing bit to persuade people to use my products, and that sort of
thing gives you a perspective; it's dirty work, but someone has to do it. I
think Ruby users at the moment are enthusiasts; if it's to grow, it needs a
bit more ease of use.

I'd say Ruby has reached the position where it needs something like a Red Hat
(Ruby Turban?) to package it and represent it to the world. I'd be willing
to get involved in that. What do you think?

Simon Strandgaard wrote:
[snip]

And if not we could burst into a PHP meeting and try to convert
some

A ruby crusade the history repeats itself.

"crusade" is a hard word. I'd prefer calling it evangelization the
traditional Societas Jesu way >;-> Actually Sascha's idea reminds me
of what Greenpeace did in the past.

Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who
don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists.

Agree, we need to spread the word a bit more.

Yesterday I went to the local library, and asked a guy looking at the
computer books, what he was searching fore. He wanted to learn perl5!
I of cause recommended him to learn Ruby (or secondary Python),
but unfortunatly no books at the library. My local library seems only to
buy bunches of Visual Basic books at the moment, which is unfortunate. If
somehow we could infect some libraries with books about Ruby, it would be
great. This is frustrating, any suggestions what to do?

Also much more Ruby in the media would be an eye-opener.

 

[Mark Hubbart]

A word of warning from a potential friend. Please don't take this
negatively,
because I think you have something, and I'd like to help. If you can
read
through to the end, there's a modest proposal.

[snip!!!]

I very much agree with you.

Regarding packaging: It would be nice if there was a simple way to
build ruby in a way that would be nice for packaging it up. I've been
gestating a project idea in my head for a while now, for a package
building system for Ruby on Mac OS X; It would have functions for
downloading various source packages, building them, and packaging them
up in a native installer. There would be options for packaging up Ruby
with WXWidgets, Fox, Tk, GraphicsMagick, etc... This would make it
simple for someone to make the latest version of Ruby available to the
Mac OS X public. I would assume that most of the work would be in
getting the thing working; it could then be ported to other platforms
by adding installer package formats.

Anyone want to help with that? I need to get on the stick and
produce something on that.

A couple days ago, I told a friend how I had been using Ruby a lot
lately, and what a great language it is; he started quizzing me on it's
features. became somewhat embarrassed, as many of the features that he
asked about, I had to tell him no. And it sounded like he had been
seriously considering checking it out, based on my description. But
without the features, he's sticking with perl and php.

Here's a question: Is there any sort of a roadmap for ruby libraries?

If not, I think there should be. There should be a place for
brainstorming about necessary libraries, where we can set up timetables
and discuss setting up rubyforge projects. Sort of a centralized ruby
library development area. This would encourage people to find an area
where they can really help, on an important library that ruby should
have. This would also encourage single-solution libraries, rather than,
say, five different competing versions.

Okay, that's enough for now.

cheers,
--Mark

 

[gabriele renzi]

il Sat, 1 May 2004 00:20:09 +0900, Gennady <[email protected]> ha
scritto::

Good GUIs choices for you to look at might be fxruby
(http://www.fxruby.org, binding for the Fox library) and wxRuby
(http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl).

luckily we even have fltk, t and gtk bindings.
And about ruby/Gtk, there is a document aboud handling unicode stuff
on they website

 

[Dick Davies]

A word of warning from a potential friend.

Some interesting points, I'll comment on a couple.

Next point. To handle what I (and probably most Java programmers) want
requires a good, configurable, GUI.

You've got a few GUI choices, and that's a selling point.
Swing showed if nothing else that one size doesn't fit all, cross-platform
GUIs are not the norm. GTK on *nix works well, maybe not so well on win32.

Bear in mind that for a lot of Ruby users, 'no GUI' is a valid choice,
far better than having to install X before you can use a command line app
or a webserver, purely because the vm is linked against it.

Finally (for this posting at least; it's too long already), distribution.
Windows users seem to have it nice; preconfigured downloadable distros. I
use Linux, so of course I'm happy to download fifty-eight different source
code tarballs from nineteen different websites for all the options I want,

That's not that different from Java though is it? Despite the fact their
download is pushing 40 Mb, you still invariably have to go and install the
software you want.

'./configure;make;make install' really isn't that much effort, and as others
have said, there are plenty of rpms / ports / whatever else you choose if you
don't like compiling your own code.

One other big futureproof of ruby is the openness of the platform -
that should avoid any problems further down the line of the kind Sun
are starting to put people through now.

--
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:

Q: What is your name?
A: Ernestine McDowell.
Q: And what is your marital status?
A: Fair.
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

 

[Yukihiro Matsumoto]

Hi,

In message "Re: Opportunities and pitfalls; was "Introducing myself - Sascha Ebach""

|> I'd say Ruby has reached the position where it needs something like a Red Hat
|> (Ruby Turban?) to package it and represent it to the world. I'd be willing
|> to get involved in that. What do you think?
|
|My opinion only: If something like this happens, I see two absolute
|requirements.
|
|1. It should be driven and/or approved by Matz himself.

I'd say "go ahead". And hire me when it succeeds.

matz.

 

[Stephan Kämper]

Hi all,

On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 12:49:12AM +0900, Lothar Scholz wrote:

So if Berlin is "dead", and no other alternate locations are provided, I
assume that EuRuKo 2004 will take place in Karlsruhe again. If no one
complains with Karlsruhe as location, I'll make this clear in the next
few days.

Sorry to bother again, but is there any news on that in the meantime?

If (or when?) we're going to meet end of june I'd slowly but surely like
to make some plans for that. To get a good ticket price for the train it
would be great to know whether to go to Karlruhe or to Berlin. ;-)

I've got an idea for a presentation, but it needs some communication.

Happy rubying

Stephan

 

[Michael Neumann]

Hi all,



Sorry to bother again, but is there any news on that in the meantime?

Yes and no (hmm, it's not really funny)

What I now know is that we can't get a room at the university of
Karlsruhe due to too less stuff at weekends and some other issues.

But I am still waiting for an answer of the FH in Karlsruhe. I have
hope, but time is running away.

If (or when?) we're going to meet end of june I'd slowly but surely like
to make some plans for that. To get a good ticket price for the train it
would be great to know whether to go to Karlruhe or to Berlin. ;-)

I don't know of any plans regarding Berlin.

I've got an idea for a presentation, but it needs some communication.

Okay. I'll set up a location (wiki) for discussing those issues.

Thanks for reminding me. If there's any progress regaring the location
(positive or negative) I'll post this here.

Regards,

Michael