On May 18, 2009, at 3:26 PM, Joshua Ballanco wrote:

>
> On May 18, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Juan Zanos wrote:
>
>>
>> On May 13, 2009, at 9:35 AM, Diego Virasoro wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>> I've noticed that languages such as Python are becoming more and  
>>> more
>>> fashionable with the Scientific communities, along side more hard  
>>> core
>>> classics like Fortran and Java.
>>>
>>> Do you think  Ruby is missing some piece of technology to be  
>>> useful in
>>> science? Or poor libraries?
>>> In the end what do you think that could be done to make Ruby more  
>>> used
>>> in Science?
>>>
>>> Diego
>>>
>>
>> In order to learn anything you have to give up hope of learning  
>> everything.
>> Most of the scientific community I work with has chosen not to  
>> learn much about
>> software languages and tools citing the hope (or convenient  
>> fiction) that none
>> of that matters.  Some will confide that tools might make a  
>> difference but it's
>> too much of a time synch to really examine the problem.  Scientists  
>> are
>> interested in their fields more than software.
>>
>> Right now there are few scientific libraries for Ruby and the ones  
>> that exist
>> often lack polish, are difficult to contribute to, and are  
>> difficult to install
>> and setup.  In comparision, a lot of the more Internet oriented  
>> Ruby libraries
>> are well tested, available as easy to install gems, ported to work  
>> on lots of
>> Ruby VMs, and available on modern distributed version control  
>> systems making
>> contributions, maintenance, and sharing much easier.
>>
>> Possibly there is a window of opportunity during which Ruby  
>> solutions will be
>> adopted if they are sufficiently available.  I don't think it would  
>> take that much
>> time, effort, and money to make Ruby's scientific libraries a lot  
>> more compelling
>> than they are now.
>>
>
>
> So let's do something about that then, eh?
>
> - Josh
>

That was fast.