Re: Bruce Eckel and Ruby

Ruby
1

Sorry, but I hate it when people attack the arguer instead of the
argument. I love Bruce Eckel’s books and highly respect his opinion.
Although I disagree with his characterization of Ruby. Attack his
opinion all you want, but I see no need to attack the man.

Steve

2

Molitor, Stephen L [email protected] wrote:

Sorry, but I hate it when people attack the arguer instead of
the argument. I love Bruce Eckel’s books and highly respect
his opinion. Although I disagree with his characterization of
Ruby. Attack his opinion all you want, but I see no need to
attack the man.

I respect your sticking up for Bruce.

But examining an arguers potential motives is a key tool for
rebuttal, just as one might examine a certain politician’s ties
to the petroleum industry to explain his motives in foreign
affairs.

Especially in a subject so subjective as choice of programming
language, as well as politics, personal opinion and preference
often makes up much more of an argument than it should.

Cheers,
Tim H.

3

But examining an arguers potential motives is a key tool for
rebuttal, just as one might examine a certain politician’s ties
to the petroleum industry to explain his motives in foreign
affairs.

The problem is that it’s too easy to make up your own assumptions about
peoples’ motives, and nobody’s offering software book authors the kind
of money that politicians get.

I know Bruce moderately, well enough to be pretty damn sure that
monetary motives are well below his radar (for goodness sake he makes
his books available free on the internet, which is more than I’ve ever
had courage to do.) People are very quick to slam other people’s
integrity on the internet. Bruce’s skin has probably thickened in time,
but it still hurts me when it happens to me, so I feel inclined to
defend him. I’ve always had the impression that this kind of thing
happens rarely in the ruby community, I would wish that to be true.

Martin

4

Martin F. wrote:

I know Bruce moderately, well enough to be pretty damn sure that
monetary motives are well below his radar (for goodness sake he makes
his books available free on the internet, which is more than I’ve ever
had courage to do.) People are very quick to slam other people’s
integrity on the internet. Bruce’s skin has probably thickened in time,
but it still hurts me when it happens to me, so I feel inclined to
defend him. I’ve always had the impression that this kind of thing
happens rarely in the ruby community, I would wish that to be true.

Agreed. Fervently.

Background as follows: my first post on comp.lang.ruby. My first
month using this beautiful language commercially. The first time
I’ve discussed Mr Eckel since meeting him in London c1988 - as
John Haggins of Zortech tried to build interest in his brand new
product, billed the first true C++ compiler in the world.

My love in those days was Smalltalk-80 and its derivatives. But
some things one has to do for money. That motivation is always
there, for all of us, at some level, surely?

I found Bruce’s recent article very helpful, especially his insights
on the sad plight of those who put their hope in “enterprise” Java.

I love the friendly feel of the Ruby community, old-style.

Thanks to Matz, to all Pragmatic persons, to David HH and
many other early cheerleaders, not least Mr Fowler.

What a wonderful thing to experience, to be part of a productive
global community. With everything for free.

Free to do better, in this case, hopefully.

Richard

5

Martin F. [email protected] wrote:

I know Bruce moderately, well enough to be pretty damn sure
that monetary motives are well below his radar (for goodness
sake he makes his books available free on the internet, which
is more than I’ve ever had courage to do.) People are very
quick to slam other people’s integrity on the internet.
Bruce’s skin has probably thickened in time, but it still
hurts me when it happens to me, so I feel inclined to defend
him. I’ve always had the impression that this kind of thing
happens rarely in the ruby community, I would wish that to be
true.

I know Bruce not at all, and have read only one book (TiCPP).
I don’t personally believe that greed is his goal in this
matter.

I do believe his opinions on !python are biased in favor of
python, though I do not fault him for it, as my opinions on
many things are likewise biased, and I can do little to
prevent it at times.

I think it much more likely that it is one of the two following
issues: (a) he is, either consciously or subconsciously,
rejecting !python because he is enamored of python, or (b) he
simply believes that python is better. I see no fault either
way.

My post merely defended the act of examining motives beyond
simple preference. That in this case it falls to preference
rather than personal gain is probably more a symptom of the
religious aspect of language preference, and not the invalidity
of motive.

Anyway, that was probably too verbose, but I’m late for dinner.
Sorry I can’t edit it down more.

Cheers!
Tim H.