On 3/14/06, Trans <transfire / gmail.com> wrote:
> A while back I wondered if Rails threatened to subordinate Ruby. (See
> ruby-talk:138502). It is interesting to note that for the month of
> March '06 ruby-talk has 2329 messages so far, while the Rails list
> (rails / lists.rubyonrails.org) has 3945. I don't think that's
> significant enough to confirm, but it does lend some weight to the
> somewhat troubling idea.

I wouldn't take the comparitive volumes of the lists as indicative of
an overshadowing. I find myself (generally) to be much more likely to
get on the mailing list for a library (e.g. xmlsec1) as opposed to the
general list for a language (e.g. C). My presence on ruby-talk is the
exception. Now, for most languages, where there are several "killer
apps", I think if you took the combined traffic for all the mailing
lists for each app, it would also dwarf the traffic for the general
language list. Ruby is (so far) unique in that there's only one
mainstream "killer app". I agree with Ryan L. that our focus should
not be to compete Ruby vs. Rails, but just build a broader base of
"killer apps" in other domains and the prominence of Ruby itself will
follow naturally.

Jacob Fugal