<disclaimer>
You know, when it comes to Ruby, I'm not even past "Go" yet. I've fiddled
with a tutorial for awhile, bought a book and posted a question on the
mailing list. That's the extent of my Ruby experience. So, I really hate to
keep throwing my 2 cents into this thread. But, I kind of think that my
current lack of knowledge of Ruby gives me a fresh perspective on this topic.
</disclaimer>
Having said all of that, I think you are right on the money with your
suggestions. I might add to your list a couple of more things. First,
consider that most people coming to the Ruby site are probably currently
using another language and are curious about Ruby. So, be sure to put
something on there that appeals to them. A couple of suggestions would be:
1. Put a few links that target specific people. For example, make it easy
for them to find information on how Ruby compares to their current language.
Make a link, "How Ruby compares to: Smalltalk, Python, C, C++", where
Smalltalk, Python, C and C++ are separate links to brief examples of code
snippets that illustrate how you would do a loop (or something) in that
language and in Ruby.
2. Explain the difference between Python's object.module.method() syntax and
the "object message" syntax.
3. Point out what iterators are. I haven't tried them in Ruby yet. But, in
Small talk, iterating through a dictionary is as easy as:
dictionary keysAndValuesDo: [ :key :value | do something with the key and
value ]. And, be sure to let them know that what they may call a dictionary
in their language is called a hash in Ruby.
4. Finally, answer some of the questions that I asked about philosophy. In a
very prominent way on the home page, put a link or a short paragraph titled,
"Why choose Ruby?" If I'm a programmer in another language, tell me why I
would be happier using Ruby.
darren
···
On Wednesday 29 December 2004 9:53 pm, Nicholas Van Weerdenburg wrote:
I'd like to see Ruby Programming Language cleaned up to immediately
convey to new users whether they want to investigate more or not. I
had business cards once described as needing to impress in the 1/2
second someone looks at it before tossing it in the garbage. A
web-site, I think, needs to follow the same principles.In that vain, I'd like to see:
1. focus on introduction, tutorials, and documentation- having news
dominate the body is not ideal- this is where you capture new people,
and the news is meaningless to most of them.
2. a marketing blurb right at the top that's more detailed. It should
give a sense of what Ruby is, and why I'd be in interested in going
further into it. Good marketing is concise communication, not mindless
hype, and, there is nothing wrong about being excited about a great
thing. "The power and beauty of Smalltalk mixed with the hard-nosed
practicality of Perl, Ruby is an ultra-productive Smalltalk and Perl
inspired dynamic programming language that closes the gap between
thought and code. Almost as important, Ruby makes programming fun
again."
3. a "Get Started in 10 Minutes Tutorial Link". A canonical tutorial
aka Python would be nice. Ideally, there is a 10 minute one and a 4
hour one.
4. a prominent "Download Now" link at the top.The python site was recently cleaned up, and while still butt-ugly, it
is nicely focused.Nick
On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:11:48 +0900, Thursday > > <nospam@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org> wrote:
> I think Ruby's popularity is growing, but I can't help but wonder what
> we can do to accelerate its adoption.
>
> I think we've all seen superior technologies go extinct due to bad
> marketing/perception--sadly, perception can be more important than
> reality at times.
>
> I think at a minimum, we need these:
>
> 1. a more formal release process--this could be as simple as documenting
> what level of testing goes into changes to the stable vs dev branches
> before they are committed to CVS.
>
> 2. a bug tracking system where we can report and view bugs--bugzilla is
> overkill, maybe something simpler like trac should be considered.
>
> 3. last but not least, online docs on Ruby's primary website (not
> 3rd-party websites) that is similar to those provided by PostgreSQL and
> Python. Maybe we can volunteer to create 'official' ruby docs to be
> hosted on ruby's primary website. Preferably using a popular
> documentation format that does not use frames like these:
>
> http://python.org/doc/2.4/
> PostgreSQL: Documentation: 7.4: PostgreSQL 7.4.30 Documentation
>
> When ruby's primary website lists ruby 1.4.6 docs for download and says
> ruby 1.6 docs are not yet ready (as of Dec 28, 2004), it can give the
> wrong impression about Ruby's current pace of activity:
> http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20020107.html
>
> This is particularly sad and misleading because matz, nobu, shugo and
> many others are very actively working on improving ruby daily (we can
> see this in the daily cvs commits). And it doesn't provide any clues to
> newcomers/evaluators about the vibrant ruby community that is
> frantically creating new ruby projects to rubyforge.
>
> Anyone else think these few changes can make a big difference in how
> ruby is perceived, and consequently chosen over other languages?
