Ken Bloom wrote:
 .
 .
 .
> think Java is a pain in the butt to program, owing to various kinds of
> inconsistent semantics (e.g. the dichotomy between arrays and
> Collections). C++, as much as everyone thinks it's a worse
> language, is nonetheless easier to program, and I absolutely love
> Ruby.
>
> --Ken
>
> --
> Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
> Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
> http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/

(I wrote the original request for these comments)

Thank-You Ken and everyone- these are VERY enlightening, empowering
comments and evalutions. I feel a lot better personally about this
investigation. I've already forwarded the TIOBE page to the team and
seen favorable responses.

Those of you who cited productivity improvements were particularly
interesting and I found your enthusiam contagious.

I've asked every developer on our team to complete a lengthy RUBY
tutorial, and every one of them has gone into it grumbling that I'm
making them do something they didn't want to do. But upon completion,
every one has been excited and positive about the language. So I think
we're on the right track. They were excited about being able to learn
the fundamentals of a new language so quickly, and as I'm sure you've
heard- I kept hearing "this is JUST LIKE PERL", or "This is better than
the JAVA syntax.." etc.

Lastly- even though this is not surprizingly a "Ruby-centric" group
here, I'm very impressed by your community and I'd like to become part
of it.  Over the years it seems like The Perl community has moved from
humble, proficient beginnings under Larry's tutuledge, to a group now
that seems more defensive and cynical than helpful.  I'd welcome a new
beginning in a new, positive, enthusiatic community as you all have
demonstrated.


In answer to a few questions that popped up in the thread-

WINDOWS?
1. we're pretty much exclusively *nix, and what legacy systems are
still on WINxxx are being migrated as fast as we can. So the WINxxx
issues aren't a big concern.

HOW IMPORTANT IS SPEED?
2. our development cycles always favor SPEED, but if we can maintain
rapid development and combine better OO design and maintainability then
its a huge win for us. 


Thanks so much, onward into the fray!