Hi, You are rightfully commenting about what I call "Packaging", as marketing people call it: The nice box around the product. That includes: - Documentation - Install/Update - Support service. For whatever reason, after 20 years in the industry, I am pretty sure that Packaging is one of the most difficult thing to do, based on the quality of the results I observe. Would you imagine a beautiful perfume in an ugly bottle ? Yet it is what a lot of software is. In french there is a saying: "Qu'importe le flacon pourvu qu'on ai l'ivresse" Which translate (poorly) into something like "The bottle is irrelevant as long as you get drunk". For sure most software developers are guys ! Yours, Jean-Hugues At 23:35 30/04/2004 +0900, you wrote: >A word of warning from a potential friend. Please don't take this >negatively, >because I think you have something, and I'd like to help. If you can read >through to the end, there's a modest proposal. > >It's too late and too early for you to start evangelising Ruby. That's a >shame, because right now there's a major opportunity for grabbing hearts and >minds. "Too late" because Ruby has grown beyond the early days when a >product can be forgiven holes, and "too early" because it still has some big >ones - getting newbies interested will leave a lot of them dismissing Ruby >unnecessarily. > >I've only been using Ruby a few days, so I'm perfect to point out a few >things; I've no emotion invested, and am almost (but not quite) totally >ignorant about Ruby. > >The great opportunity is that I and a lot of people just like me have just >realised (or are about to realise) that they have a serious need, and Ruby >might be just it. But I need to be sure. That means I need to see some >things about Ruby before I jump. They may exist, but I can't see them, and >that itself makes the point. > >I'm a Java programmer, and am sitting on a product with world-wide usage and >over a quarter-million lines of code. I'm deeply worried, after the Sun/ >MediocreSoft rapprochement, about the potential future of Java. That's a >shame, because for all its faults, Java is the best production language I've >come across in over thirty years practical experience in the industry - and >don't bother trying to engage me in a discussion over that; I know it's a >personal evaluation. > >However I am sufficiently worried about the future of Java to consider >alternatives, and after looking around, Ruby seems the best bet out of a >narrow field. The criteria are: > >* Proper OO. >* Write once, deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale. >* Open Source with unrestrictive licence. >* Comprehensive functionality, good libraries, easy extensibility. > >Now you ruby experts know that ruby is good for all this. My first point is, >however, that after looking at ruby in some detail for well over a full day, >I was reluctantly about to discard it as a possibility because it doesn't >support Unicode, and that or something like it is necessary for "Write once, >deliver once, run anywhere, in any language/locale". > >Yes, I know. But it took me two days to find out, and I *still* don't know >how to write or handle Unicode strings in ruby code. Or where to go to find >out. So, POINT 1. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, a current >features, capabilities, and extensions document. A central repository of >HOWTOs would be nice (how about one on how to write and handle Unicode in >Ruby? The world doesn't end in Japan and America.) > >Next point. To handle what I (and probably most Java programmers) want >requires a good, configurable, GUI. I'd heard of Tcl/Tk, but most of the >examples I'd seen were pretty simplistic and, how to say this politely, not >overdesigned. Some of what I read mentioned others. It's nice there's a >choice, but you can't make a choice without information. If you make the >wrong choice because of lack of information, by the time you realise, you may >have invested so much effort that you're stuck. I took a look at Fox for my >eval. So, POINT 2. Needs improved documentation. As a minimum, some good >examples of how GUI coding can be done with different packages, and >INFORMATION about the different possible choices. Oh, and the GUI code comes >from another website? It's a separate product? You mean I have to install >*three* things? Ruby, the GUI toolkit, *then* the Ruby toolkit enabling >stuff? Where's the documentation? > >Finally (for this posting at least; it's too long already), distribution. >Windows users seem to have it nice; preconfigured downloadable distros. I >use Linux, so of course I'm happy to download fifty-eight different source >code tarballs from nineteen different websites for all the options I want, >and configure, make, and install each of them (in the correct order so as not >to muck up pre-requisites), *then* manually add links to put the libraries in >the right place for my particular Linux distro, then copy files all over the >place when it doesn't work. > >After all, that's what every Ruby hero has had to do over the years; that's >how they learnt how Ruby works. > >Naah. If I had any sense I'd have dumped this and gone on to something >productive days ago. > >99% of the people you might want to attract would have; I suspect you've lost >a few already. We're not all sysprogs, and you need the ordinary joes as >well as the early adopters and enthusiasts. > >You need to have good packages for all the distros. Something like the Java >SDK and Runtime packages. A single file download and install that contains >*everything* (yes, Victoria, the GUI as well). OK, that means big files, but >disks are big these days, and install procs can have things called options. >Oh, and if you need to distribute applications to end-users (yes, those >mythical beasts *do* exist), you need a tool to generate customised runtime >install packages of Ruby and whatever extensions are needed (oh, and it needs >to be able to recognise already installed rubies and do deltas). > >Documentation and Distro packages. It looks to me that Ruby has some serious >good function and serious good technical people (and maybe a couple good >designers). There are a lot of interesting sounding people in the Who's >Who. >Shame a lot of the links are broken. > >What Ruby needs is some thought to the process side and the needs of the >non-techie user. I'm an application programmer, but for my sins I've had to >do the marketing bit to persuade people to use my products, and that sort of >thing gives you a perspective; it's dirty work, but someone has to do it. I >think Ruby users at the moment are enthusiasts; if it's to grow, it needs a >bit more ease of use. > >I'd say Ruby has reached the position where it needs something like a Red Hat >(Ruby Turban?) to package it and represent it to the world. I'd be willing >to get involved in that. What do you think? > >On Friday 30 April 2004 00:34, Simon Strandgaard wrote: > > Josef 'Jupp' Schugt <jupp / gmx.de> wrote: > > > Simon Strandgaard wrote: > > > > Sascha Ebach <se / hexatex.de> wrote: > > > > [snip] > > > > > >> And if not we could burst into a PHP meeting and try to convert > > > >> some ;) > > > > > > > > A ruby crusade :-) the history repeats itself. > > > > > > "crusade" is a hard word. I'd prefer calling it evangelization the > > > traditional Societas Jesu way >;-> Actually Sascha's idea reminds me > > > of what Greenpeace did in the past. > > > > > > Anyway: Ruby evangelization is important because many people who > > > don't use Ruby simply do so because the don't know it exists. > > > > Agree, we need to spread the word a bit more. > > > > Yesterday I went to the local library, and asked a guy looking at the > > computer books, what he was searching fore. He wanted to learn perl5! > > I of cause recommended him to learn Ruby (or secondary Python), > > but unfortunatly no books at the library. My local library seems only to > > buy bunches of Visual Basic books at the moment, which is unfortunate. If > > somehow we could infect some libraries with books about Ruby, it would be > > great. This is frustrating, any suggestions what to do? > > > > Also much more Ruby in the media would be an eye-opener. > > > > -- > > Simon Strandgaard > >-- >Clear skies! >Mike Calder. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Web: http://hdl.handle.net/1030.37/1.1 Phone: +33 (0) 4 92 27 74 17