Posted by Curt Hibbs
Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:07:00 GMT
Microsoft’s Don Box recently had some interesting things to say about Ruby:
From where I sit, Ruby has the language thought leadership position and is the competitor I hope AndersH is losing the most sleep over nowadays.
...
BTW, I agree that Ruby stands to eat at least as much mindshare from Java as we do.
I also am hopeful that we’re SLIGHTLY less vulnerable to Ruby than Java is, but I hope none of my colleages in the big house get any comfort from that hope ;-)
One thing I do know is that Ruby has pretty much eclipsed Java on my competitive radar.
via James Britt
no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Fri, 21 Apr 2006 18:29:00 GMT
Ruby is kicking butt—I really liked that quote from one of Tim O’Reilly’s posts on the State of the Computer Book Market (which he does annually).
Of course, he’s talking about book sales specifically in the category of programming languages. As a Ruby advocate, the best part for me was the statistics for Ruby book sales compared to other dynamic languages:
Ruby continues its meteoric ascent. In book sales, it is now slightly larger than Python, 80% the size of Perl, and 1/3 the size of PHP. As more publishers jump on the Ruby and Rails bandwagons, we expect these numbers to grow even more significantly next quarter.
no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:14:00 GMT
I saw this before, about a year ago, but Tim O’Reilly just reminded me. Its a funny and disturbing video of what it could be like to order a pizza in a future where companies are wired in and know everything about you.
no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Mon, 17 Apr 2006 18:40:00 GMT
Dave Thomas just posted Eric Knapp’s report about how the productivity boost of Ruby on Rails has more repercussions than just the obvious saving of time and money. It is also an enabler for things that were previously not possible.
My client can no longer replace any IT employee when someone leaves. They are down to one network administrator (!) and two programmers.
...
Then I started sharing rails with him. I like rails and I tend to be enthusiastic. About ten minutes into my presentation he interrupted me and said, “So, this could save my IT department, couldn’t it?”
I this in an important, possibly overlooked, aspect of a 10x to 20x productivity increase, which fits in nicely with ideas I wrote about in The Longest Tail.
no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Sun, 16 Apr 2006 05:32:00 GMT
Almost a year ago, Sunao Tanabe translated part 1 of my Rolling with Ruby on Rails tutorial into Japanese.
Now, Yoichiro Hasebe has translated part 2 of Rolling with Ruby on Rails into Japanese!
Thank you, Yoichiro!
1 comment
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Sat, 15 Apr 2006 06:58:00 GMT
I don’t usually post on topics that are not related to software development, but I often lament over the fact that so much of our news reports are one sided.
Did you know that almost a week ago, 60 world renowned scientists wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister requesting a rational examination of the science of global warming? I try to following the global warming debate pretty closely and I never heard about this until Dave posted about it.
Wow, you’ve really got to be on the lookout for this stuff. The media just doesn’t report it. It’s not in my local newspaper. It’s not in the national newspapers or news magazines. I haven’t heard a single word about it uttered on the radio. Most TV news never even mentions this stuff. How are we to stay informed if we don’t spend inordinate amounts of time digging through the web to find out what’s going on.
I just searched Google News and I only found two reports:
A comment posted to Dave’s blog article listed three Canadian reports.
Why would the mainstream media see this as not worth reporting?
On a related note, let me ask you: do you have news sources that you trust to give you balanced coverage? If so, then please share it with us.
8 comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:20:00 GMT
I few weeks ago I reported that Washington University (in St. Louis) was offering a Ruby class and that it was possible that a Rails class would be offered as well.
The first Ruby class started last night, and I just found out that the Rails class is now official, and will be taught in four evenings starting on August 22:
http://www.cait.wustl.edu/courses/RUBY20.co
As I reported before, both the Ruby class and the Rails class are thanks to the efforts of Object Computing Inc., which developed the courses and is supplying the instructors.
1 comment
Ruby breaks in to the "Top 20"
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Fri, 07 Apr 2006 17:58:00 GMT
Ruby finally made it into the top 20 list of programming languages, as measured by the TIOBE Index!
no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:09:00 GMT
Yesterday, Cedric posted a fairly well written blog entry titled Why Ruby on Rails won’t become mainstream. This is not Rails bashing, as the author is quick to point out (he admits to being a big fan of Ruby on Rails), but rather his honest assessment of what he sees as the current deficiencies in Ruby on Rails.
The article is a good read, and I agree with most of his deficiency list (though not all). But I do not draw the same conclusions, and many of the posted comments said the same thing. Adam Schepis posted his reasons on his own blog.
Part of the problem is without some definition of what you mean by “mainstream” its hard to know if everyone is talking about the same thing.
Be sure to read the comments to Cedric’s blog posting, many of them are as good as the post itself. DHH himself posted a tongue-in-cheek response that made me laugh out loud:
Thank you for the kind writeup, Cedric. I definitely agree that Ruby on Rails has a tough road ahead becoming truly mainstream. That road is always tough, for any technology. Less for technical reasons and more for cultural and marketing reasons.
But nothing gets me fired up like knowing we have something valuable that lots of people haven’t discovered or experienced yet.
Although evangelism and rhetorics sometimes do bore. Perhaps I should just, as the guy with the God complex, widely considered to be arrogant, and once called “king of the internet”, pass down some stone tablets and command people to obey. Free will is overrated. (hm)
UPDATE: David just post his full response on his own blog. Given his understanding of “mainstream”, he doesn’t really want Rails to go mainstream.
To me, mainstream is mostly about reaching people who just don’t care. There are certainly benefits to having such a broad reach that it can include people who don’t care, but the downsides are at least as big. Especially in open source projects like Rails that we’re primarily involved in to do something for ourselves. Solve our own problems, not be a vendor, and all that.
no comments
