Losing?  This thread is bizarre.  Are the 'Dulcimer Players of America'
losing to the 'Piano Players International' because fewer people play
dulcimers?  I hope you can say, 'of course not'.  

How can a language lose?  

If I spend my whole life raising only my two children, have I lost because
someone else had a family of 12?  I don't think so.  

How can a language lose?

If Ruby-ites express great pleasure at coding in Ruby, the world has won.
Because there are many more happy people.  That is what is needful.

Some people will take great pleasure in Java.  I have laughed (a "wow, I'm
feeling good" laugh) when coding in Perl.

How can a language lose?  This question is so much less important than: "How
can people lose?"  If people do not find joy, they lose.  When they find
joy, they win.  And it seems like there are many joyful people here in
c.l.ruby (aka ruby-talk).

Matz: Congratz.  You spread joy.  This is a good lead to follow.

Drew

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brandon J. Van Every [mailto:vanevery / 3DProgrammer.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 1:10 PM
> To: ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org
> Subject: the fallacy of build it and they will come (was)
> 
> 
> Martin DeMello wrote:
> > Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery / 3dprogrammer.com> wrote:
> >
> >> You are not as far along, but there is nothing stopping you guys. 
> >> Drop the "build it and they will come" attitude.  
> Recognize that if 
> >> that's your attitude, people *won't* come.  They'll go to 
> Python, or 
> >> Java, or C#, or something better.
> >
> > Okay, you want to jump in and ask questions without 
> spending the time 
> > lurking first. Fine. But telling us what we're doing wrong on two 
> > days' acquaintance with the group, and none at all with the 
> language, 
> > is a bit rich, no?
> >
> > And we're having fun building it. And you do realise, do 
> you not, that 
> > you're speaking to people who *did* come? Without the benefit of a 
> > comp.lang.ruby-marketing to draw us in? Think about it.
> 
> Think about the stats in the Mindshare thread.  Ruby has got 
> 1/3 to 1/5 the mindshare hits of Python.  Both are tiny 
> compared to Java.  You're building it, but people are not 
> necessarily coming.  If you do some research on it, who 
> knows, maybe you'll see stasis or even exodus.  If you 
> believe that mindshare matters - for instance, how much open 
> source developer contribution can you marshal? - it would be 
> prudent to monitor these things.
> 
> I feel I can pronounce this because it isn't any different a 
> case from what's happening with Python, and I've spent a lot 
> of time looking at that. Python is just in a lot better shape 
> than Ruby.  Python is also the kind of place where, yes the 
> c.l.p crowd gives the same kind of "Well who are you?" 
> reaction that you're giving.  But they've also got a 
> dedicated marketing-python list where people say, "Hm, the 
> man's got a point.  What are we doing to address these 
> things?"  Despite the brusqueness of style. Some people are 
> willing to hear outside criticism, to get the reality check, 
> others aren't.  Some people tend to the future, others don't.
> 
> > TIMTOWTDI, incidentally, applies to languages as well as it does to 
> > features.
> 
> Yes.  And since you're currently losing to Python, that 
> should worry you.
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
> Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA
> 
> 20% of the world is real.
> 80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
> 
>