Bruce Eckel and Ruby

Ruby
61

Stephen K. [email protected] wrote:

Tim H. [email protected] writes

have functional equivalents in Ruby. The other is
significant whitespace.

If you want to drive people away from Ruby, go with that.

That wasn’t evangelism. Just my opinion. That my opinion
doesn’t match the Ruby parser verbatim shouldn’t invalidate it.

Tim H.

62

[email protected] wrote:

It really scares me to hear that people don’t have time to read.
they follow, books they learned from and so on. If I get a blank
stare or something about being too busy for that…

Gary W.

Rather than yet more technical knowledge, the area that frequently
needs improvement is skill in communicating and working with others -
so maybe if they read “How the way we talk can change the way we work”
or “Difficult Conversations: How to discuss what matters most” or
“One-to-One in the Workplace”

63

On Dec 26, 2005, at 12:58 PM, Chris Ferrell wrote:

Listen, people have lives outside of programming. And not
everybody is
an emotional fanboy with the latest perceived toy. There was no
compelling
reason to learn Ruby.

I was responding to the idea that the only reason to read or learn
about something new was for an immediate ‘commercial reason’. My point
was not that Ruby had to be that new thing but that discovering what is
commercially relevant does actually require reading and learning about
things outside of your immediate situation. As an employer, I
encouraged
that sort of thing within the context of the job and not as some sort of
extra-credit homework.

Clearly I’m opining from a distance without any real knowledge of the
specific situation but it was the general sentiment that I was
responding
to.

Gary W.

64

On 12/23/05, [email protected] [email protected] wrote:

difficult is it to read a book? If your professional and personal
life is
so busy that you can’t find time to read a book or to learn about a new
topic then I think your priorities need to be re-evaluated. I’m not
saying
that learning Ruby should be on the top of everyone’s todo list but I do
think it is important to regularly expose yourself to new ideas for both
your personal and professional health.

Gary W.

Listen, people have lives outside of programming. And not everybody
is
an emotional fanboy with the latest perceived toy. There was no
compelling
reason to learn Ruby.