Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity

ruby-talk
41

Tom Copeland wrote:

Is there a better way to lay out that front page to make stuff like that
more visible?

Maybe use a bold, Ruby red color?

The problem is that since those are mostly links, they show up in
whatever the stylesheet definition is. That seems to override any font
tags I put around them. But I made them all bold... that should at
least make them stand out better...

Tom,

How difficult would it be to give RubyForge a new look? I'm not asking that you do this, but perhaps some kind soul good donate some time to giving Rubyforge a crisper look. I am not asking for a whole redesign, but to replace images, perhaps change some css stuff and add some borders/images in certain places.

Perhaps people could make mockups and we could submit them for approval/vote, and go that route?

Just thinking outloud here,

Zach

···

On Tue, 2004-12-28 at 16:00, Premshree Pillai wrote:

42

Mark Bennett wrote:

Does anyone else think it would be useful to have a short (~50 page
max) Ruby introduction, focused on showing someone with a programming
background how to do all the normal OO tasks?

Certainly! I have been looking for such an introduction when I first tried
Ruby and I really missed it...
A small introduction of the different concepts (that differ from other
languages) is very usefull, that's the one reference I look at when tasting
new programming languages.

···

--
"May the source be with you"

43

Another great beginning-to-intermediate level book is Practical Common
Lisp (http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/\). We could definitely take some
inspiration from that.

martin

···

Mark Bennett <mark@the-bennetts.ca> wrote:

I just learned Python a few months ago when I started a new job. One
of my coworkers recommended the excellent Dive Into Python book.
(http://www.diveintopython.org) It's good because it's relatively
short, and directed towards someone who has programmed before. It also
focuses on teach by giving examples of things you do in your code on a
daily basis, so I've found it to be a good resource even now that I
consider myself fairly comfortable with Python.

44

i'd love to see (iii), with a format of docs that i like.
single page preferably. i still find myself going back to
the syntax page in the 1.4.6 docs as this still remains the
most concise description of most things. the quick ref from
zenspider [1] is awesome. it would be very nice to see this on
the main ruby-lang.org page.

Alex

[1] Ruby | zenspider.com | by ryan davis

···

On Dec 29, 2004, at 7:46 PM, Thursday wrote:

Let us leave the 'hyping' to others. I'm sure there are plenty of folks who can easily point to more irony (morony) or even stupidity in my response. But I hope the energy will be channelled into making (i) and (iii) happen instead.

45

So, who runs ruby-lang.org (en) and how can we help them improve it along these lines?

···

On 2 Jan 2005, at 03:17, Nicholas Van Weerdenburg wrote:

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:22:16 +0900, James Britt > <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote:

darren wrote:

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.

Rather than comparisons to other languages, it would be better to offer
specific information on accomplishing various practical tasks. Perhaps
within a task-oriented section one could offer a comparison with another
language as a way of explaining A Ruby Way of doing something in terms a
Ruby newcomer might better understand, but what wins people over is the
specific knowledge that a tool will help them accomplish some
well-defined goal.

Point people to web development kits, database bindings, text-processing
libraries, XML tools, unit testing frameworks, distributed programming
code, and so on.

Language comparisons tend to get too abstract for most people, and are
often a source of goofy flame wars, as it seems nobody understands The
Other Language well enough to get it Just Right.

The site should be task-oriented, and unless the visitor is a language
buff or dilettante, the Ruby <-> #{language} stuff is academic.

A language attracts people looking to do something their current
language does not do well, if at all.

James

These are good points.

A classic text on sales "The New Strategic Selling" makes a startling
suggestion- don't worry about your competition. When you do, you often
1. aren't listening to your customer, and 2. aren't presenting your
product as a solution to what you heard from the customer.

The same probably applies here.

Nick
--
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg

46

I assert that the programming environment may be more important in attracting new users than features of the language. I suspect
that few BASIC enthusiasts would fans of the language if their access were via Emacs and a VB shell.

I used to teach at a vocational/technical college. With Visual Basic or with BASIC on the old Apple 2, or even on the UCSD P-system,
I could turn the kids loose after an hour's lecture. FreeRIDE and RDT are good starts, but they have a long way to go before they
are bullet-proof and accessible to entry-level programmers.

Even to an old fart like me (I've been programming since 1976), the bother (for lack of a better term) of the tools available for
developing with Ruby may push me out of Ruby. I don't so much need an IDE per se, but I do need a bullet-proof debugger. I would
dearly like to see an environment that would let me add/change/delete lines of code in the middle of execution, without having to
terminate and restart the application I'm testing.

Maybe ActiveState could be induced to publish an interface to which the Ruby community could develop? I'm thinking that if
ActiveState won't provide Ruby support in Komodo, the Ruby community could provide support for Komodo. As the proverb goes, "If
Mohammend won't go to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohammed."

Kevin Kleinfelter

47

ruby.info is "for sale" ...

-austin

···

--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca

48

Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

>It may be that netidentity has nobody actually using the ruby.org >domain, or at least so few that they might be willing to sell it.

It's no harm to ask them. I had tried for ruby.net before, but the
domain holder did not respond. Maybe I was not too good at
negotiation. Is someone willing to ask netidentity?

Hi Matz,

Thanks for spotting my email. (I was afraid that by replying in a semi-abandoned thread it might get missed).

I'd nominate the people who are behind the Ruby Central Inc. non-profit (Chad Fowler and/or David Alan Black). I think being a certified non-profit gives them more clout, and might make netidentity more open to listening.

Before they approach netidentity, I'd suggest we come up with a strategy of what we're willing to offer in return.

It might be helpful for our bargaining position if we can try to find out if ruby.org is being used at all by anybody. In my initial Google searches, I didn't manage to find anything, but google doesn't find everything. Anybody want to explore the wilds of cyberspace to find out anything we can about the domain?

Once we have some knowledge, I'd open by explaining to them who we are, what Ruby is, and why we are interested in having the domain (but without making it seem as though we're desperate, since we're not). I'd then ask them if there's any way they would consider giving up the domain.

I think initially it would be better not to offer money at all, but instead to offer them positive publicity. The huge list of Ruby websites can actually work in our favour this way, if everybody who runs one of the aformentioned Ruby sites is willing to agree to place some kind of positive netidentity blurb on their site for some period of time (say 6 months or 1 year) and Ruby Central is willing to work together with netidentity to post a press release, that sort of publicity might be very valuable to netidentity.

If they are reluctant to work with us on that, I suppose we could try to buy the domain through the non-profit. I'd imagine a few of us would be able to come up with some cash for that.

Chad, David, what do you guys say?

Ben

···

In message "Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity" > on Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:04:42 +0900, Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> writes:

49

Cool, thanks, feedback on RubyForge is always welcome...

Yours,

Tom

···

On Tue, 2004-12-28 at 16:15, Premshree Pillai wrote:

> The problem is that since those are mostly links, they show up in
> whatever the stylesheet definition is. That seems to override any font
> tags I put around them. But I made them all bold... that should at

Damn, you're fast! Much better now, I think.

50

How difficult would it be to give RubyForge a new look? I'm not asking
that you do this, but perhaps some kind soul good donate some time to
giving Rubyforge a crisper look. I am not asking for a whole redesign,
but to replace images, perhaps change some css stuff and add some
borders/images in certain places.

FWIW, there's a new theme available now; if you log in and go to "My
Page" and go "Account Maintenance", there's a dropdown box to select a
new theme. Just pick the GForge theme and click ok and then click
around a bit...

Perhaps people could make mockups and we could submit them for
approval/vote, and go that route?

The difficult thing, I think, about a mockup is that it might be hard to
translate onto the actual GForge HTML stuff. So someone could come up
with a really nice look, but I might have no idea how to make GForge
actually implement that look.

But sure, suggestions or improvements to the stylesheet or anything else
would be welcome.

Just thinking outloud here,

Right on, good stuff!

Yours,

Tom

···

On Tue, 2004-12-28 at 16:39, Zach Dennis wrote:

51

Aquila ha scritto:

Mark Bennett wrote:

Does anyone else think it would be useful to have a short (~50 page
max) Ruby introduction, focused on showing someone with a programming
background how to do all the normal OO tasks?

Certainly! I have been looking for such an introduction when I first tried
Ruby and I really missed it...
A small introduction of the different concepts (that differ from other
languages) is very usefull, that's the one reference I look at when tasting
new programming languages.

well, the more the merrier. If you'd write it, I'd provide a translation :wink:

52

Another announcement on behalf of our Japanese friends at Rubyist Magazine.

(English translations for these articles will appear... uh... sometime in the
near future. Translations for the previous three volumes are scheduled to
appear in the upcoming Ruby zine, which I was told would launch this month.)

--Steve

···

-------------------------------------------------

This is Sasada Koishi of the Japan Ruby Association (and editor of Rubima
Magazine).

We have released Volume 4 of Rubyist Magazine, a Webzine produced by volunteers
from the Japan Ruby Association.

http://jp.rubyist.net/magazine/?0004

Even though the end of the year is a busy time, we gathered plenty of articles.
Enjoy!

==============================
= Rubyist Magazine, Volume 4 =

http://jp.rubyist.net/magazine/?0004

Rubyist Magazine ("Rubima") is a Webzine that brings you technical articles,
interviews with Rubyists, essays, and more.

Foreword

Greetings from Masayoshi Takahashi, the editor-in-chief of Rubyist magazine.

Rubyist Hotlinks No. 4: Tadashi Tada

Rubyist Hotlinks is a series of interviews with well-known Rubyists. For this
interview, we spoke with Tadashi Tada, the author of tDiary
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/tdiary/>. We were able to speak with him not
just about tDiary, but about all sorts of interesting things.

Let's Begin Programming with Ruby No. 3 (Dan)

Ruby primer for people who are not familiar with computer programming. Take
your very first steps with Ruby!

Using Ruby on Rails (Moriq)

Introduction to Ruby on Rails, a popular Web application framework.

Ruby Library Report No. 3: O/R Mapping Tools (Michiaki Baba)

Series introducing libraries and development tools for Ruby developers. This
article introduces four libraries for implementing O/R mapping: rorm, TapKit,
SDS, and Active Record.

Customizing Your Blog with lily No. 2 (Kan Fushihara)

This is a series from the developer of lily, an easy-to-use blog tool written
in Ruby, with information on customizing lily and creating your own blog. This
article explains flavour, a mechanism that lets you customize the format of a
blog quickly and easily.

Using Win32OLE No. 2 (cuzic)

Second article in a series explaining Win32OLE. This article describes how one
can use Win32OLE to process Excel files.

Build Ruby on Windows No. 1 (Tamura)

Series explaining how to build Ruby on Windows. This article is suitable for
even complete novices.

Ruby/Tk Workshop Report (Workshop participants)

Report on the Ruby/Tk workshop held December 11th at the IMS Tenjin in Fukuoka.

Ruby News

A gathering of Ruby-related news stories.

Ruby Event Check

Upcoming events that are related to Ruby or that might be of interest to
Rubyists.

-------------------------------------------------

The next issue is scheduled for mid-February. Upcoming articles include:

* Rubyist Hotlinks No. 5: Toshiyuki Masui
* Let's Begin Programming with Ruby No. 4
* Customizing Your Blog with lily No. 3
* Using Win32OLE No. 3
* Ruby Library Report No. 4

As always, we'd like to hear from you. Feel free to send your thoughts,
opinions, and suggestions.

In addition, we always welcome the following types of articles:

* Technical articles about Ruby
* Ruby usage examples
* Essays related to Ruby (even if only loosely!)
* Other types of articles dealing with Ruby

...in Japanese, if possible. :slight_smile:

Any questions or comments you may have should be sent to the Rubyist Magazine
editorial desk at magazine@jp.rubyist.net.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com

53

Ben Giddings wrote:

Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
>
> >It may be that netidentity has nobody actually using the ruby.org
> >domain, or at least so few that they might be willing to sell it.
>
> It's no harm to ask them. I had tried for ruby.net before, but the
> domain holder did not respond. Maybe I was not too good at
> negotiation. Is someone willing to ask netidentity?

Hi Matz,

Thanks for spotting my email. (I was afraid that by replying in a
semi-abandoned thread it might get missed).

I'd nominate the people who are behind the Ruby Central Inc. non-profit
(Chad Fowler and/or David Alan Black). I think being a certified
non-profit gives them more clout, and might make netidentity more open
to listening.

While it true that it can't hurt to ask, the lack of hits in your search
merely failed to turn up the way it is being used (I've been a customer of
NetIdentity since the beginning of their existence)...

NetIdentity rents "designer" email addresses. That's why my email address id
curt(at)hibbs.com. I don't own the hibbs.com domain, but I get my email
service through them (as do many of my relatives whose last names are also
Hibbs). NetIdentity hold many thousands of domains.

The fact that you didn't get any google hits is mostly because no one has
renting the associated web space from them (www.hibbs.com).

I think it is unlikely that they would give up the domain, but it still
can't hurt to ask.

It might be better to try to snap up one or more of the newer top-level
domains.

Curt

···

> In message "Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity" > > on Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:04:42 +0900, Ben Giddings > <bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> writes:

54

Perhaps I've skimmed too much or otherwise missed part of this thread,
but has it been established that the lack of ruby.[com|net|org] is a
real concern?

I suppose if someone just handed over any of these domains for free
that would be nice, but beyond that, how much time and money is this
worth?

Given how people become aware of URLs (links from a known site,
Google, on-line or printed articles, word of mouth, RSS, blogs, and so
on), is the actual domain name (remarkably) valuable?

Offhand, having ruby.org be the default Ruby site would be sort of
nice, but I'm extremely skeptical that it has anything to do with
language adoption.

James Britt
(trying out a gmail approach to ruby-talk)

···

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:14:28 +0900, Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> wrote:

Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> In message "Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity" > > on Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:04:42 +0900, Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> writes:
>
> >It may be that netidentity has nobody actually using the ruby.org
> >domain, or at least so few that they might be willing to sell it.
>
> It's no harm to ask them. I had tried for ruby.net before, but the
> domain holder did not respond. Maybe I was not too good at
> negotiation. Is someone willing to ask netidentity?

Hi Matz,

Thanks for spotting my email. (I was afraid that by replying in a
semi-abandoned thread it might get missed).

55

Austin Ziegler wrote:

ruby.info is "for sale" ...

Ugh, whoever is "selling" this, it's a scam. You can't even make an offer on one of their domain names without first buying a $25/year "membership" in their "club". No thanks.

···

--
Glenn Parker | glenn.parker-AT-comcast.net | <http://www.tetrafoil.com/&gt;

56

Of course, it probably wouldn't hurt if RubyForge was written in Ruby rather
than Python (though I realize that is a large project).

T.

···

On Tuesday 28 December 2004 04:51 pm, Tom Copeland wrote:

But sure, suggestions or improvements to the stylesheet or anything else
would be welcome.

57

Tom Copeland ha scritto:

The problem is that since those are mostly links, they show up in
whatever the stylesheet definition is. That seems to override any font
tags I put around them. But I made them all bold... that should at

Damn, you're fast! Much better now, I think.

Cool, thanks, feedback on RubyForge is always welcome...

it is always nice to give some, cause the response is always great :slight_smile:
Anyway, I think that Support/Links is somewhat too crowded and thus takes back some of the visibility of all the links.
I think that instead of:

Report a Ruby Bug
Read more about Ruby (Ja)/(En)
Ruby Application Archive (RAA)
Programming Ruby
View Ruby documentation
RubyForge Support
RubyForge RSS Feeds

we could have just 5 items, removing "read more.." and "programming ruby..", cause those are things supposed to appear on the 'wiew documentation' page.

Just my two cents :slight_smile:

···

On Tue, 2004-12-28 at 16:15, Premshree Pillai wrote:

58

Nice theme, but the "RubyForge" logo looks bad on it.

-austin

···

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 06:51:29 +0900, Tom Copeland <tom@infoether.com> wrote:

FWIW, there's a new theme available now; if you log in and go to "My
Page" and go "Account Maintenance", there's a dropdown box to select a
new theme. Just pick the GForge theme and click ok and then click
around a bit...

--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca

59

Curt Hibbs wrote:

While it true that it can't hurt to ask, the lack of hits in your search
merely failed to turn up the way it is being used (I've been a customer of
NetIdentity since the beginning of their existence)...

NetIdentity rents "designer" email addresses. That's why my email address id
curt(at)hibbs.com. I don't own the hibbs.com domain, but I get my email
service through them (as do many of my relatives whose last names are also
Hibbs). NetIdentity hold many thousands of domains.

The fact that you didn't get any google hits is mostly because no one has
renting the associated web space from them (www.hibbs.com).

Right, but do a google search for "hibbs.com", within the first few links I find "Dr@Hibbs.com", "mitchell@hibbs.com", and RubyTalk entries from you. OTOH, when I search for ruby.org, and try to get rid of the Ruby-language related entries I find... almost nothing. Maybe hibbs is a more common last name, but it seems to me that I should find a few random ruby.org addresses in there.

Here's a URL for a google search that tries to find "ruby.org" without ruby-language links:

http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&q="ruby.org"+-programming+-python+-xml+-jp&btnG=Search

(i.e. search for ruby.org without "programming", "python", "xml" or "jp")

There are less than 400 of them, and virtually all of them appear to be related to the language, a few others are links to ruby.org.uk, but I can't find any bare "ruby.org" links that aren't related to the language.

It might be better to try to snap up one or more of the newer top-level
domains.

Might as well get both, if possible. People are already accidentally linking to ruby.org, and I think it's the most natural domain for the Ruby language.

Ben

60

ruby talk (AKA James Britt) wrote:

Perhaps I've skimmed too much or otherwise missed part of this thread,
but has it been established that the lack of ruby.[com|net|org] is a
real concern?

I suppose if someone just handed over any of these domains for free
that would be nice, but beyond that, how much time and money is this
worth?

Given how people become aware of URLs (links from a known site,
Google, on-line or printed articles, word of mouth, RSS, blogs, and so
on), is the actual domain name (remarkably) valuable?

I don't know how you can quantify its value, but I'd say it definitely has some. Sure, ruby-lang.org is the first hit when you search for Ruby using Google, but given that Python's official site is python.org, and perl's is perl.[com|org], I'm not sure if people would realize that ruby-lang.org is Ruby's official site.

Now, by redesign and such, I think it could be more clear that that is, in fact, the main site. I just think that ruby.org would mean instant credibility, ease of use, and lack of confusion.

OTOH, I think that redesign of the main Ruby sites is more important (and probably more doable). I think it would be great if they all shared a unique look and feel, and fulfilled one, and only one role. For instance, the ruby-doc.org site shouldn't have any non documentation downloads, and rubyforge.org shouldn't have anything but ruby projects (and that means it shouldn't host the ruby bug database).

In the perfect Ruby world that exists only in my head, www.ruby.org would be the official Ruby site, and would be a simple page for newbies, with few links and an easy way to find out what they need to find out about Ruby. In this perfect world, Ruby documentation would be at doc.ruby.org, files would be availble from downloads.ruby.org or maybe files.ruby.org (or both). There would be forums at forums.ruby.org, a wiki at wiki.ruby.org, news at news.ruby.org, etc. In this perfect world it would be instantly obvious that all the various ruby sites were all official ruby sites, under the same umbrella, and not just fan/user/enthusiast sites. Of course, in this perfect world, I would be 4m tall and made out of titanium, able to shoot lasers from my eyes and to bend humans to my whim with mind-control rays... so I wouldn't count on my perfect world coming into being in the next few months... at least not until the price of titanium drops a little.

On a slightly more serious note, is there any real interest in revamping the look of ruby-lang.org? Are other people as confused as me with all the various ruby sites, their "officialness", and their role in the ecology of the language?

Ben