On Sep 7, 2005, at 6:56 PM, graham wrote:

> I agree. Although Ruby has potential, it still appears to be a  
> language for small systems/utilities. Partly because of the tools  
> support, partly because of performance, partly because it is  
> "new" (ish).

I've been watching this list for over a year now and I don't remotely  
believe the above.  I think you might want to look into some of the  
things Rubyists are doings.  I expect to to be surprised.

> Ruby seems to be at the stage of Java 0.9.. i.e. 1 set of command  
> line tools and loads of "learning applets" to play with.

Again this, does not jive with what I see here every single day.  Did  
you read Ara's post earlier tonight about the image analysis of  
hurricane Katrina being done with Ruby, by NOAA?

> Its going to be a few years and something like "RBuilder" (c.f.  
> JBuilder) to get people using it to solve real problems...

I believe it's my job to manage complexity, as the programmer, not  
the IDE's job.  Tools are nice, but that has little to do with what I  
can and can't manage.

James Edward Gray II