On Sunday, May 16, 2004, 12:13:50 AM, Martin wrote:

> Lyle Johnson <lyle / knology.net> wrote:
>> I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
>> interesting to me that there aren't any entries on the list that I would
>> consider pure end-user "applications". One could technically argue that
>> an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don't see anything there
>> that really stands on its own -- they're all packages, tools, etc. that
>> developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites, whatever.

> I've noticed that about the ruby community in general - there's a lot
> more interest in developing libraries, hacking the language, etc, than
> in writing actual "applications". I think it's partly because of the
> (unusually?) high level of interest in language design rubyists have,
> and partly because as programers, we feel the lack of libraries more
> than we feel the lack of apps.

Apps are the things we get done at home or work for productivity or
interest, which are private or of little interest to others.
Libraries are the reusable components that make building an
application much easier, which *are* publically available.

Ruby being a very high-quality programming language, I think it's
appropriate that its target market is programmers, not "users" :)

rdict is one app I like, and which I would use regardless of its
implementation language.  glark also looks good, but I haven't really
used it yet.  Then there's rake, which blurs the lines.

Cheers,
Gavin