In message <41EEBA81.6080907 / infofiend.com>, Ben Giddings 
<bg-rubytalk / infofiend.com> writes
>I don't know how you can quantify its value, but I'd say it definitely 
>has some.  Sure, ruby-lang.org is the first hit when you search for 
>Ruby using Google, but given that Python's official site is python.org, 
>and perl's is perl.[com|org], I'm not sure if people would realize that 
>ruby-lang.org is Ruby's official site.

My experience when I wanted to find the Ruby home page was to try 
www.ruby.org and www.ruby.com. When that didn't work I went to google 
and was a bit surprised at the strange name that I found - ruby-lang.org

I then did some digging around ruby-lang.org and some other sites before 
concluding that ruby-lang.org was the correct site, rather than a site 
claiming to be the correct site when it wasn't. Given the domain name I 
did wonder.

You don't have to make any effort to remember www.NAME.org or 
www.NAME.com but ruby-lang, well you have to file that away as something 
to remember, the -lang is not obvious, at all.

Does this have much to do with language adoption? I don't think so. Ruby 
will stand or fall on its own merits. Dr Dobbs had an article on Ruby 
this month in their web services section. Thats a step in the right 
direction - although the 'D' language had a mention years ago and look 
how well that has been adopted :-)

Does it have much to do with making info easy to find? Absolutely.

In case you think the reason I was confused about ruby-lang.org is 
because I'm new to software/internet etc. I'm not, I've been writing 
software since 1981, starting with 6502 assembler on a VIC-20. I was 
confused because the domain name is not obvious/what you expect.

Stephen
-- 
Stephen Kellett
Object Media Limited    http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk
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