On Jun 4, 2006, at 11:09 PM, Hector wrote:
> I've been trying to pickup Ruby for a few months now. I've written  
> a few
> good programs that help me at work with SAN/Unix Administration. I've
> also run into a few dificult(for me) programming problems. I like to
> figure things out on my own so I never post questions in forums like
> this, this probably contributes to my bad programming skill, but  
> that's
> besides the point.
>
> I'm at a point where I'm asking myself if it is worth the trouble  
> for me
> to learn Ruby. How many people are really writting Ruby? Are there any
> truly robust, good applications being written in Ruby? How well are  
> Ruby
> libraries being maintained? I know there is a lot of documentation for
> Ruby but I find it hard to find very specific docs. Python seems to  
> have
> a whole lot more doc and many more books exist for Python. Does Python
> have a greater following. I love Ruby but I don't want to waist my  
> time
> with a laguage that may not have a future.
>
> I don't really care about learning 10 programming languages. My brain
> wouldn't be able handle it. I want to learn 1 or two languages and  
> learn
> them well.  I know Pascal very well, I know Perl pretty well, now I
> would like to get away from Perl and so I started out leaning  
> Python. I
> think Python is ugly and not very fun to write. I then jumped into
> Ruby(a whole lot of fun!) but I don't get the warm and fussies about
> Ruby's lasting power.

The first thing I'd say here is that Ruby just got the cover of both  
Dr. Dobb's and Linux Journal, which is a pretty big statement of how  
far it's reaching.  Can't say the same for many languages.  As for  
materials, it's worth it to note that (1) Python's a little older,  
(2) Ruby started in Japan so there's a lot of Japanese documentation  
out there that hasn't been translated yet.

But I think the most important thing you should note is how much fun  
you have programming in Ruby.  If you're enjoying it, you can trust  
that a lot more other people do too.  And that's a REAL "killer  
app".  (David Heinemeier Hansson of ruby on rails talks about  
happiness a lot in this respect)

-Mat