> |I understand, but let's look at it the other way: > | > |look, camels walk strangley, and probably do not smell good; python snakes > |are very unfriendly and dangerous. Animal is animal, and every animal has > |it's own beauty, it's own advantage, that made it survive and thrive. > | > |Any interpreted language is slow, a snail is one of the few animals that can > |really make the best out of being slow. Besides, snails are really beautiful > |animals. So, why not think of the snail as a profound object-oriented > |zen-kind-of snail. In order to think deep, you need to relax. For me Ruby is > |a good tool, because it is deep, so a snail on the cover could be really > |inspirational. > | > |:-)! > |amike via Henning > > I respect your positive way of thinking, and will try to follow. > I like you. Thanks. Another option would be to rally some community support. I just fired this email off to propsals / oreilly.com and think it would be helpful to see more emails of a similar (non-flame) nature sent in their direction expressing concern about the cover. Industry support is an amazing thing: hopefully we can do something about this. -sc From sean / chittenden.org Mon Sep 3 10:21:50 2001 Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 10:21:50 -0700 From: Sean Chittenden <sean / chittenden.org> To: proposals / oreilly.com Subject: Community feedback and concern regarding the choice of covers for the upcoming Ruby book... Message-ID: <20010903102150.J45089 / rand.tgd.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-PGP-Key: 0x1EDDFAAD X-PGP-Fingerprint: C665 A17F 9A56 286C 5CFB 1DEA 9F4F 5CEF 1EDD FAAD X-Web-Homepage: http://sean.chittenden.org/ Morning. I hope everyone had a pleasant labor day. I'm writing in response to a thread on the ruby-talk mailing list: http://www.ruby-talk.org/blade/20717 If you'll read through the thread you'll see that there's a great deal of disappointment regarding O'Reilly's choice of animals for it's cover. I can't speak for everyone on the list, but I'm sure that others share my disappointment in the choice of animals for the cover. Ruby has many merits, of which, elegance of the language's design, time to develop of applications, and speed of code execution (relative to Perl and Python): none of these qualities are even close to being exemplified by a snail. Given the large and heavy influence O'Reilly's has with many, many readers, I think I am safe in saying that the repercussions and image of the language could be seriously hampered. That said, I would like to see if it's possible to have at least one of two things happen: 1) have the cover changed to something more sexy, appealing, and suited to the Ruby language (possibly even a Ruby, none of the security books are animals); and 2) include the language's and book's author in the choice of a book that will represent the language, I'm sure he would appreciate it. http://www.ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/20723 http://www.ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/20751 I would like to let you know that I am planning on soliciting the support of the Ruby community to help see that this is changed. The print date is still two months away and there is more than enough time to have this discussed, and changed. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to write back. I am anxious to address this and will do all that I can to help amend this farce of a cover choice. Thanks for your time and review, I anxiously await your response. Sincerely and concerned, Sean Chittenden PS Given the history of Perl and the importance that the Camel book has had for that language (which, by the way, has been the bread and butter of my professional career, thank you), I think you would probably be one of the first to see scope of my concern. That said, could you talk with the editor and see what can be done regarding this? Thanks.