# Re: South African Ruby Programmers

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-south-african-ruby-programmers/64900>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [August 15, 2006, 2:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-south-african-ruby-programmers/64900 "2006-08-15T14:20:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-south-african-ruby-programmers/64900/1 "2006-08-15T14:20:13Z")

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> register at my web page:
> 
> [http://mobeus.homelinux.org/eclectica/show/RubySouthAfrica](http://mobeus.homelinux.org/eclectica/show/RubySouthAfrica)  
> (or the alias, since the first will be phased out:)  
> [http://www.lesismore.co.za/eclectica/show/RubySouthAfrica](http://www.lesismore.co.za/eclectica/show/RubySouthAfrica)
> 
> I am hoping to recommend Ruby for a new project but if I am  
> virtually the only Ruby programmer in all of Gauteng, the  
> answer will be a resounding NO!

But, think of the job security! 😛

Seriously, I would think you could take any decent programmer and get  
them up to speed on Ruby in less than a month. Look for  
Perl/Python/Smalltalk programmers (with C/C++ experience if you’ll need  
to write extensions).

Regards,

Dan

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**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-south-african-ruby-programmers/64900/2 "2006-08-15T14:20:15Z")

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On 8/14/06, Berger, Daniel [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> > register at my web page:
> 
> Seriously, I would think you could take any decent programmer and get  
> them up to speed on Ruby in less than a month. Look for  
> Perl/Python/Smalltalk programmers (with C/C++ experience if you’ll need  
> to write extensions).

I know this, and have also seen evidence of it (the team of Java  
programmers who rewrite their huge app in Ruby without prior  
experience) - but the clients have specifically asked for all hardware  
to be vendor neutral, which means vendor neutral maintainablility is  
also very likely to be a priority. I can tell them “people can learn  
this quickly”, but I’d much rather tell them “people know this”. Big  
amounts of money make people nervous about new, little known things,  
they normally retreat to “safer” rather than “better”.

Les