Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

>>But speaking as someone who has been on the mailing list
>>nearly four years, I'm just bored with that stuff.
>>    
>>
>
>Intellectually, I understand your position.  I'm bored with all kinds of
>things in computers.  It comes from having experience.
>
>But there's a question you have to face as a community.  Will you address
>the concerns of newcomers who might want to use Ruby?  Or will you give them
>the cold shoulder because you find their questions boring?  Or even try to
>make them go away?  Will you be expansive or provincial in your outlook?
>Interested in mainstream mindshare, or an oasis that only "the priveledged"
>can and should find?  Patient with newcomers, or crusty with them if they
>ask "the wrong" questions?
>
>comp.lang.python has already drawn battle lines about this, and that's what
>makes it a nasty place.  Until you've killfiled the irritants, of course.
>  
>
The main problem is that these types of threads happen too often. I've 
only been subscribed to the
list for two weeks, and I see 4 threads specifically dealing with, 
"Python vs. Ruby, which is better?" and I'm
sure if I looked harder, I could find other threads that converted to 
similar topics because of later posts
(and I'm not counting the "Guido says Ruby strings suck" thread, and 
others that may be out there).

I'd also imagine that these two weeks aren't particularly unique in 
this, so you can imagine that people get
tired of it.  I imagine that it would be much better received if people 
would search the archives for threads
such as this (or even threads in general), and then ask questions 
relating to things that are unclear, or that
the older threads left out.  That way the same things wouldn't have to 
be rehashed all the time (see, for
example, all the posts on the Gentoo forums where the response is, 
"Searching the forums, I found this...").

Perhaps his humor was in bad taste, but I'm sure you can imagine that 
while discussion of other languages
and their strengths and weaknesses compared to ruby is not frowned upon 
by any means, Python is a
frequently mentioned example, and there is little chance that many new 
insights will come from the same
people discussing the same topics about the same languages (at least 
until the next major revision of
Python is fleshed out and any radical new features are announced).

- Dan