Is there really an impending Ruby fracture?

On 10/25/06, pat eyler [email protected] wrote:

you can read the rest at:
How Many Rubies Does the Future Hold?

Great reading, a must for everyone following this thread, I see much
better
how you come to your conclusion now. Maybe some want to overrate the
differences between Rails and Ruby that might not even exist, almost my
guess.

So, no, I’m not terribly worried. I’m more worried that the Rails

community will continue to create user groups without realizing
that there’s already a Ruby brigade in the area, or that people
will continue to flock to Rails without reailizing the gem of a
language that’s hiding beneath the surface.

Yeah and OTOH if they are not interested in languages per se they should
remain with the framework anyway, but sure enough there are people
interested in the “language” and not well informed enough about the
“StandAloneNess” of Ruby, which as a matter of fact fuelled my concern.

But those are a

whole different kind of problem.

Thx for sharing your thoughts.

Robert


The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.

  • George Bernard Shaw

Rimantas L. wrote:

“At the core, I think Ruby is defined by Rails. Sooner or later, the
Rails guys will realize they’re the dog and start finding a tail that’s
easier to wag for the customers with lots of money. That will likely
lead to fractured Ruby syntax and fractured Ruby dialects.”

Am I the only one failing to see any sense in this?

No.

The premise is untrue; Ruby is defined by Matz.


James B.

“The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with
computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity.”

  • Edsger W. Dijkstra

pat eyler wrote:


So, no, I’m not terribly worried. I’m more worried that the Rails
community will continue to create user groups without realizing
that there’s already a Ruby brigade in the area, or that people
will continue to flock to Rails without reailizing the gem of a
language that’s hiding beneath the surface. But those are a
whole different kind of problem.

If there is fracturing, it is with the Ruby as Rails point of view.

My experience is that some people will prefer to start a Rails group
rather than attend an known, existing Ruby group because they are more
interested in learning the correct incantations to run Capistrano than
in understanding how Capistrano works.

For some, Rails is a nicer PHP or VB; Ruby per se is not of interest to
them. (Which is fine, unless or until Ruby discussions or gatherings
are dominated by application development monoculture.)


James B.

“The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with
computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity.”

  • Edsger W. Dijkstra

On 10/25/06, James B. [email protected] wrote:

are dominated by application development monoculture.)
Just my 2 cents and speaking more personally. I have less of a desire
to
code for an executable computer program then a web application. I
believe
that I jumped into Rails too quickly without spending more time with
Ruby.
Still when I’m searching for the right function to build to accomplish
whatever, and I go back to the Pickaxe book for reference, I’m always
amazed
at how simple Ruby can help to implement functionality.

As I’ve been looking over this thread I believe that in the community
your
seeing more people gravitating to the idea of building web sites / web
apps
. I don’t think it’s Rails over Ruby.

Stuart

If there is fracturing, it is with the Ruby as Rails point of view.

My experience is that some people will prefer to start a Rails group
rather than attend an known, existing Ruby group because they are more
interested in learning the correct incantations to run Capistrano than
in understanding how Capistrano works.

For some, Rails is a nicer PHP or VB; Ruby per se is not of interest to
them. (Which is fine, unless or until Ruby discussions or gatherings
are dominated by application development monoculture.)

Rails brought me to Ruby, along with tons of other people, but I’ve
seen very marked differences between the Ruby and Rails cultures.

I think the idea of “an impending fracture” reeks of alarmism, but it
would be delusional not to think a cultural shift of some kind was
taking place. Ruby books outsell Perl and Python books now, and that
certainly wasn’t true a very short time ago. Ruby’s identity is
guaranteed to change as a result of the Rails boom, both for better
and for worse.

Obviously I can’t complain. As someone who only came to Ruby because
of Rails in the first place, I don’t know what it was like before the
newbies got here, since I am one. I can say I prefer the Ruby
community, but to be fair, for me personally, the only thing really
annoying about Rails is that I have so much work I don’t have any time
to learn Smalltalk and Seaside. I’ve certainly faced worse downsides
than that, when dealing with other technologies.

Tim S. wrote:

In article [email protected],
“M. Edward (Ed) Borasky” [email protected] wrote:

https://www.lostlake.org/blog/index.php?/archives/11-The-Impending-Ruby-Fractu
re.html

That page makes me really appreciate cmd-option-ctrl-8 on my Mac! :slight_smile:

I don’t speak Mac … what on Earth does that Vulcan Nerve Pinch do?

In article [email protected],
“M. Edward (Ed) Borasky” [email protected] wrote:

https://www.lostlake.org/blog/index.php?/archives/11-The-Impending-Ruby-Fractu
re.html

That page makes me really appreciate cmd-option-ctrl-8 on my Mac! :slight_smile:

From: “M. Edward (Ed) Borasky” [email protected]

Tim S. wrote:

That page makes me really appreciate cmd-option-ctrl-8 on my Mac! :slight_smile:

I don’t speak Mac … what on Earth does that Vulcan Nerve Pinch do?

Apparently, it toggles the whole display into inverse-video.

Regards,

Bill

On Oct 31, 2006, at 12:25 AM, Tim S. wrote:

In article [email protected],
“M. Edward (Ed) Borasky” [email protected] wrote:

https://www.lostlake.org/blog/index.php?/archives/11-The-Impending-
Ruby-Fractu
re.html

That page makes me really appreciate cmd-option-ctrl-8 on my Mac! :slight_smile:

I suffer from impaired vision. Although I am a Mac user, cmd-option-
ctrl-8 didn’t help that much. Even with inverted colors, the page
still shows very low contrast and is hard for me to read. It may look
pretty to those with normal vision, but it’s hell for those suffer
from vision problems that make low contrast text hard to read.

Regards, Morton

On Oct 31, 2006, at 1:29 PM, Hugh S. wrote:

that make
low contrast text hard to read.

That’s interesting: it looks like black text on white for the most
part to me, (WinXP, Firefox), though the pale green links are lower
contrast than the text.

To me, using Apple’s Safari browser, the text on David P.'s blog
appears as pale olive green on a very pale yellow green background.
That’s difficult for me.

http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/ruby/

Yes, and it’s easy for me read. Black text with dark blue links on a
white background don’t give much trouble. I don’t even have to
increase the text size with cmnd-+ or use ctrl-scroll – the
initially displayed size is fine.

Of course, as you say, I’m seeing the default settings I’ve made for
my browser.

Regards, Morton

On Oct 31, 6:13 pm, Morton G. [email protected] wrote:

shows very
That’s difficult for me.
[snip]

I just tested it in Safari, and while I don’t have impaired vision,
even I would find that text impossible to read. I think it’s a bug
rather than a design decision, though: in Firefox it appears as black
text on a white (or pale) background. It appears to be treating the
main text as a link; if you mouse off the text it becomes brown, just
like the links on the page.

Best,
James

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Morton G. wrote:

I suffer from impaired vision. Although I am a Mac user, cmd-option-ctrl-8
didn’t help that much. Even with inverted colors, the page still shows very
low contrast and is hard for me to read. It may look pretty to those with
normal vision, but it’s hell for those suffer from vision problems that make
low contrast text hard to read.

That’s interesting: it looks like black text on white for the most
part to me, (WinXP, Firefox), though the pale green links are lower
contrast than the text. Some of the blue text in the header is more
difficult, and the dates and most of the sidebar are much lower
contrast. The problem for me was the size of the print, mostly,
which I fixed with ctrl-+ (actually, ctrl-scrollwheel). That’s
more of a kludge, because I then need horizontal scrolling.

I tend to keep styling to a minimum on my sites so people’s browser
defaults don’t get overridden.

Is my ruby page accessible to you?

http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/ruby/

Regards, Morton

    Hugh

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Morton G. wrote:

re.html

That’s interesting: it looks like black text on white for the most
part to me, (WinXP, Firefox), though the pale green links are lower
contrast than the text.

To me, using Apple’s Safari browser, the text on David P.'s blog appears
as pale olive green on a very pale yellow green background. That’s difficult
for me.

I think I’d find that near impossible too, but it seems a strange result
from my reading of the stylesheet, colours seem to be 666 and 333
for the most part, AFAICS.

I pretty certain I can’t try out safari on Windows XP, but I’ve never
actually checked…

Is my ruby page accessible to you?

http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/ruby/

Yes, and it’s easy for me read. Black text with dark blue links on a white
background don’t give much trouble. I don’t even have to increase the text
size with cmnd-+ or use ctrl-scroll – the initially displayed size is fine.

Good. I’m glad that works. I’ve submitted an alternate stylesheet for
rubylang.org to improve the clarity there, but I’m waiting for those
in charge of that activity to implement (something like) it. I found
the blue on blue difficult enough to be uncomfortable.

Of course, as you say, I’m seeing the default settings I’ve made for my
browser.

Regards, Morton

    Hugh