Da Nedea 19 Februr 2006 14:28 Glenn Smith napsal:
> If I represent half of Ruby's users (other Windows users comfortably under
> the rock) then I'm not alone in my experiences.  
>

You don't represent any significant majority of Ruby users on any platform in 
my opinion. I'm well aware there are (wannabe) Ruby users that need to have 
their hands held, or that need to be spoonfed. And there's where we see a 
fundamental split in attitude:

Group one: they take the time to find out how to ask for help, they contact 
the community, post their problem. They get their hand held and get 
information spoonfed usually as is necessary.

Group two: they bitch, whine, moan, rant, and ramble and drone over and over  
about how things are being Done Fundamentally Wrong, and things should Be 
Changed, lest everything go down in Flaming Hell. They get at best ignored, 
at worst flamed. And possibly helped once they finally get to state their 
problem in a non-insulting way.

> I hope similar attitudes don't contribute to Ruby's downfall.  
>

Programming languages and tools are not end-user software. Especially the 
minor ones are -not- a product, and presentation and marketing are completely 
unimportant compared to actually useful features. I could personally live 
without all the prebuilt binaries and installers in the world if it meant 
that for example YARV will be finished (in any sense of the world that can 
apply to an open-source project) sooner; and I -know- I represent at least 
half of Ruby's users in wishing for a faster runtime. People don't use Python 
because they like their website layout / design, most use it because they 
think it's a good programming language. Same for Ruby, and I'm sure it's  the 
same for humongous amounts of other quality noncommercial software.

They're intended for people that show at least -some- genuine interest, and 
mostly presume certain skills / common sense - like being able to figure out 
where to get help when stumped instead of relying on being spoonfed 
constantly. It takes at most five minutes over a slow connection of clicking 
around to figure that out on the ruby-lang website, hopefully much less after 
the revamp, and at most 30 seconds for anyone with mediocre google skills to 
get the basic points right.

Ruby will not go boom because of failing to attract users incapable / 
unwilling of putting as much effort as clicking on "downloads" on the website 
to find out about how to get a distribution of the language.

> And for what it's worth, when was the last time you saw Windows apps say
> "hey, you downloaded me, wanna check my md5wassisname?".
>

Windows convention - whatever the author chooses. A lot of Windows installer 
systems check the integrity of the self-extracting archive on installation, 
by the way. *nix places this at your option by default instead of hiding 
what's happening from you. The fact they're provided does NOT say "check me, 
check me, CHECK ME!" or anything along those lines.

Oh yes, and for completeness' sake, MySQL provides MD5 signatures with its 
Windows downloads. I'm sure quite a few other software projects too.

Noone's forcing you to check checksums of files you download, it's _provided_ 
for your or anyone's convenience - if you are for example using an unreliable 
network, or are paranoid, or whatever reason people that check download 
checksums do so. You don't know what MD5sums are? Ignore them. You don't 
think they're useful for you? Ignore them. I think you get the picture.

David Vallner