ruby advocacy

[Ara.T.Howard]

one of the groups in our lab is looking into languages for a new project.
they are considering python, ruby, perl, and a few others. aside from the
obvious ones (pickaxe, ruby way, www.ruby-lang.org, etc) are there any
convincing resources people would reccomend as useful for convincing project
manager types that ruby is _the_ way to go? i've see quite a few slides and
presentations over the years - but wonder which are most up to date and
relevant, esp. ones people have personally found useful.

thanks for any info.

-a
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[John]

... are there any

convincing resources people would reccomend as useful for convincing project
manager types that ruby is _the_ way to go?

The best form of convincing is accomplished by applying each candidate
language to the same small trial project to see which one best fits
your needs, expectations, work philosophy and end-user abilities.
Your lab group will accept the results far more readily if they have
input into the selection process. Management approval is also far
easier when your growing collection of testimonial-based assertions is
supported with measured results that exactly match your group's
localized needs.


John

 

[David Garamond]

one of the groups in our lab is looking into languages for a new project.
they are considering python, ruby, perl, and a few others. aside from the
obvious ones (pickaxe, ruby way, www.ruby-lang.org, etc) are there any
convincing resources people would reccomend as useful for convincing project
manager types that ruby is _the_ way to go? i've see quite a few slides and
presentations over the years - but wonder which are most up to date and
relevant, esp. ones people have personally found useful.

IIRC, one of the things that made Python hit the newstands big time was
when it was 'acquired' by BeOpen and on their website they had a Success
Stories with big names like Google, IBM, etc. and how they all use
Python for biggish projects. The web page was kind of corporatish and
formal and all that. After that, we began to see Linux Journal doing a
cover + special edition on Python, magazine articles and interviews
popping up everywhere, etc. Perhaps we can do the same for Ruby...

 

[Phil Tomson]

IIRC, one of the things that made Python hit the newstands big time was
when it was 'acquired' by BeOpen and on their website they had a Success
Stories with big names like Google, IBM, etc. and how they all use
Python for biggish projects.

Kind of like this page?:
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RealWorldRuby

The web page was kind of corporatish and
formal and all that. After that, we began to see Linux Journal doing a
cover + special edition on Python, magazine articles and interviews
popping up everywhere, etc. Perhaps we can do the same for Ruby...

I think at this point the magazine articles are ours for the writing.
What I mean is if you can write a good article on a subject that somehow
involves Ruby you can probably get it published somewhere (Dr. Dobb's,
O'Reilly websites, IBM DeveloperWorks, Linux Journal, Software Developer).
At this point there have probably been enough "Intro to Ruby" type articles,
what we need are articles showing ways in which you've applied Ruby to
solve some problem. The magazines aren't going to come to you begging you
to write an article, you need to approach them.

For example, I think that Rubyx is good for at least two articles in
Linux [Journal|Magazine] (Hint, Hint!):
1) Rubyx: a new source-based Linux distro (I'm sure you can think of a
better title, but you get the idea)
2) A new init system based on Ruby

I think that perhaps a "What's new in Ruby 1.8.x" could also get published
especially if it focuses on things like syck/YAML (and how Ruby is the
first Language to support YAML 'out of the box').

Come to think of it, perhaps an article on YAML would be in order - one
that uses Ruby for it's examples. I don't think I've seen any YAML
articles anywhere.

Anybody embedded Ruby into a C or C++ program? I think an article on
embedding Ruby would also be good.

I'm sure there are lots of other Ruby-related articles out there waiting
to be written. The more you get Ruby out there into the computing press,
the more exposure it will get. I suspect that a lot of people here on the
list are here because they read an article about Ruby somewhere - that's
how I made it here to Ruby-land (Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt's article on
Ruby in the Jan 2001 issue of Dr. Dobb's got me hooked). All you've got
to do is give people a good reason to download and install Ruby on their
system even if (or maybe especially if) it's just for fun.

Phil