
"What will be Ruby's legacy?" - raganwald
http://rethink.unspace.ca/2008/8/21/what-will-be-ruby-s-legacy
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thomasmallen
When will the Ruby fanboys stop being such fanboys? This is just more of the
same masturbatory "we're great" bullshit which seems to be so popular in the
Ruby community.

Referring to Rails:

 _"we sent out a press release to everyone we knew suggesting that we would be
building all future projects on this new open source framework that nobody had
ever heard of."_

So I guess I shouldn't expect much level-headed writing from a guy who would
make that stupid a business decision. How about taking six months to quietly
build some internal sites, a couple pilots for clients, and to actually learn
the language and framework? My shop's transitioning into using Drupal for most
projects, but it's not as simple as flicking a switch.

I like this nugget too:

 _"Ruby has captured the hearts and imaginations of artists and the poets."_

Both the "artists" and the "poets" links go to blogs of people who are pretty
obviously software developers first and foremost.

~~~
raganwald
You know, there's a lot of room in the world for people who make sensible
business decisions, who don't get caught up in hype, who don't consider their
work to be art or poetry or music.

But I hope there will always be room for people who think what they're doing
is great and who have an incurable enthusiasm and optimism for it.

If that isn't level-headed, I say _fantastic_. How very dull and drab our
world would be if nobody ever fell in love with technology.

~~~
thomasmallen
I didn't say that masturbating is necessarily a _bad_ thing, I just don't like
watching others do it.

~~~
raganwald
I can't go along with your simile on this one. You sound just as emotionally
invested in this issue, but from a very negative, dark perspective. I hope you
find happiness elsewhere.

------
raganwald
_Let’s face it, people with access to special power or information are always
threatened by a future where their pet special thing is now common and
mundane._

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jrockway
_In Ruby, it’s cool to learn all about things that used to be the realm of the
academic elite: functional programming, parallel processing, finite state
machines, compiler optimization, MapReduce…_

What does this have to do with Ruby?

~~~
jon_dahl
Not much with the language directly (though Ruby owes a lot to functional
programming). But the Ruby culture puts emphasis on learning about these sorts
of things.

