----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon Cozens" <simon / simon-cozens.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: Ruby advantages over Perl


> Jason Creighton <androflux / remove.to.reply.softhome.net> writes:
> > ....or whatever. We need more flexible package managers in general, not
just
> > a language specific package manager every time we feel like we need to
> > reinvent the wheel.
>
> The problem with solving the general case once and for all is that
everyone
> talks about it and nobody does it. CPAN may have its flaws, but it beats
> anything non-existent hands down.

Ah, the ontological proof of the existence of CPAN.

Actually I've always thought it worth noting that
CPAN wasn't built in a day (to coin a phrase).
Whatever benefits it has, it wasn't created with
all of them at once.

Likewise, RAA is much better than it was a year ago.
(Thanks to the hard work of certain developers.)

To me, the important thing is continuous improvement.
Sure, catch the vision of what RAA should be like in
five years. But don't stop worrying about what it
will be in six months.

The thing about dreams is that their implementation
is so daunting. That's one reason XP (arguably) is
better than Big Design Up Front. When we dream, we
sometimes forget YAGNI and want to do everything at
once.

I think this is why RubyGems went away (not to
disparage the author, who did a great job). It was
more dream than reality (though it was a *good*
dream). raa-install is not as good as the dream of
RubyGems; but raa-install is here now, and it works.

And as Simon said so aptly, it beats anything non-
existent hands down.

Hal