On Thursday, 12 December 2002 at 12:03:52 +0900, Phil Tomson wrote:
> In article <20021211184131.A84073 / freeze.org>,
> Jim Freeze  <jim / freeze.org> wrote:
> >On Thursday, 12 December 2002 at  7:42:00 +0900, Shannon Fang wrote:
> > 
> >I have given two presentations on Ruby at my work. It was received much
> >better than I anticipated. 
> 
> However just to show that YMMV: I gave a presentation on Ruby to my group 
> at the same company that Jim works at (different location) about 1.5 years 
> ago and it was NOT received well.
 
 And it had nothing to do with Phil's abilities, no matter what he says. :)
 Seriously, I think Phil was up against the pointy haired manager that wanted to
 get promoted. Very scary...

> >I used to get "Only you know Ruby", to
> >which I would respond, "Any programmer here after 2 days will know
> >Ruby better than they currently know Perl". 
> 
> I think this is really true.  That's certainly how I recall feeling after 
> moving from Perl to Ruby (more comfortable in Ruby after a couple of 
> days).
 
Well it doesn't help perl when I can say that I have programmed in perl
for 5 years, and now that I have switched to ruby 2 yrs ago, I can
hardly remember anything about perl. It's like when you have a bad
experience and your mind blocks it from your memory. Man, I wonder if
someone in the future undergoing hypnosis could suffer severe 
psychological trauma if they uncovered their old perl memories? ;)

Tis true of perl: When I wrote the code, only myself and God knew
 what it said. Now (1 week later) only God knows.

> >After seeing the code
> >in two presentations, I think they are beginning to believe this
> >bit of truth.
> >
> 
> good for them ;-)
 
I think the point to remember here is that people are fundamentally 
lazy. You can spout the beauty/power/simplicity/mainatainablity of 
Ruby all day and people may just look at you with a blank stare.
But, do a grand job in 1-2 days, then show it to your boss and colleages and
they look at code they have never seen and can actually understand it,
there is a natural tendancy to build an instant and  strong bond with such a powerful
language. Then, when they go back to looking at C/C++/Java/Perl, and simple
tasks are hidden behind complex syntax and typecasting that makes
their head hurt, most will eventually take the path of least pain, I
mean resistance.  (The lazy principle)

-- 
Jim Freeze
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