Obie Fernandez wrote:
> InfoQ was "unlaunched" last week, (meaning we're still doing some final
> bug-fixing), but you should still check it out and see all the good 
> stuff we
> have so far. Exclusive video interviews with DHH, David Black and other
> well-known Rubyists, as well as presentations such as Charles and Tom
> demo'ing JRuby at JavaOne last week are coming soon.


Interesting page header: " ...the enterprise software development 
community."

But maybe there's still something for me.

:)


I happened to skim though  the David A. Black article, and this caught 
my eye:

"Violinist Itzhak Perlman has described the difference between the 
violin and the piano in these terms - not that one is easy and the other 
difficult, over the long haul, but specifically that the piano, unlike 
the violin, gets out of your way. Says Perlman:

Violinists have a harder time to make pure music than pianists, because 
pianists ... are immediately forced to turn the phrase. They don't have 
to deal with vibrato, they don't have to deal with shifting, they don't 
have to deal with sliding, they don't have to deal with bow-speed .... 
[On the piano,] basically you put down the key and you get a sound.... 
You have to deal with music immediately."

Of course, I'm no Perlman, but I still found his opinion peculiar.

I've played some piano, and played some violin, and much prefer the 
violin because, to me, it gets out the way far more than does a piano.

Plus violins are lighter;  carrying a piano around gets tiresome.

Hence, violins are more agile.

"In this light, the piano emerges as the Ruby or Rails of the musical 
instrument kingdom."

I tend to think of Ruby as the Stratocaster of programming languages.


-- 
James Britt

http://www.ruby-doc.org       - Ruby Help & Documentation
http://www.artima.com/rubycs/ - The Journal By & For Rubyists
http://www.rubystuff.com      - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://refreshingcities.org   - Design, technology, usability