Sean Russell wrote:
As anybody who reads this group knows, I have an ulterior motive for
wanting Ruby in Mozilla… because Ruby would then suddenly have
access to both a really nice, fairly ubiquitous GUI toolkit, and a
peerless application distribution mechanism.
Yes, yes, yes… I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Curt
Curt Hibbs [mailto:curt@hibbs.com]
I think we should set up a pseudo project on RubyForge for
collaboration on
this. The project wiki can be used for general
brainstorming/collaboration.
CVS and released files can be used to house the resulting
professional-level
promotional materials. These could include presentation slides, white
papers, comparisons, testimonials, productivity metrics, etc.The goal would be to be an ongoing resource for people who need to promote
Ruby.Curt
PS
Ok… I just convinced myself! I’m going to get this set up on
RubyForge.
I’ll post an announcement when its ready for contributions and
collaboration. I should be able to do it this evening.
It turns out that I didn’t have time to get this set up this evening. I’ll
have to work on it tomorrow night, instead.
Curt
Sean Russell wrote:
Paul Vudmaska paul@vudmaska.com wrote in message news:409A7AC8.2040403@vudmaska.com…
Luckily, my clients could give a darn what I use. They do see
productivity. They like that.
Yep, when i talk about code to my current customer his
eyes glaze over and i have to mention better/quicker
to keep him from dozing off.
That’s always nice, when you encounter people like that. I’ve been
stuck as a contractor for the past 8 years, and people who hire
contractors tend to be more touchy about what the project is written
in – they want to be able to maintain it after you’re gone.
Fortunately, I’m a gifted code poet so the lucky one
that is fortunate enough to inherit my elegant progeny
will benefit from it’s fluidity and self evident
nature - documentation just sullies it’s beauty. You dont see picasso
documenting
his paintings?
I had one client, once, who didn’t really care. He had an app that
was 10 years old that he was still maintaining and growing.
Unfortunately, he really didn’t care what it was written in, and by
the time I got to it, it was a total hodgepodge of C, Bash, Perl, TCL
– even Pascal. Believe me, it is times like that when I totally
approve of language fascists. Nonetheless, I couldn’t resist
throwing Ruby into the mix, and I got rid of a small chunk of Bash
script while I was at it.Ouch. I did a lot of server side stuff w/javscript. We had about 10
It certainly is ubiquitous; I’ve had to do a fair
amount of it myself.
Immensely ubiquitous but my not finding a (active)
server side version does not speak well for it so
probably others, smarter than me, feel the same as
you.
You’r probably right. As the developer of rexml, one of
the coolest things i’ve used since switching from M$,
you obviously know more than me. Javascript and Ruby
share one thing that I am very fond of (and rely on /
need - since i was kidding about the above) - simplicity. Javascript’s
(originally designed
by one guy at Netscape
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_javascript.htm
) domain was simple clientside dom interaction. OO was
not it’s main goal. I get the most bang from encapsulation and
simplicity not polymorph or inheritance.
How many clientside web projects have you seen where you needed
full blown class oriented behaviour? I’ve not seen …many. You can
provide quite a bit of clientside funcionality without it.
http://foursixes.com/?cc=booking
I still like the fact that you can
extend base classes with prototypes and a few other
things - I’m just saying it was a big boon for us - relative to
vb,components,websphere. But i’m just beginning to see why i
like/should like ruby better and do value your
insight.
Plenty of folks out there mandate a browser - usually IE. For solutions
that i could ensure the browser to by moz, using a ruby interp would be
grrreat!As anybody who reads this group knows, I have an ulterior motive for
wanting Ruby in Mozilla… because Ruby would then suddenly have
access to both a really nice, fairly ubiquitous GUI toolkit, and a
peerless application distribution mechanism.
Hooyeah -an unquestionably admirable undertaking.
I think a good project(to use the above) would be a db agnostic (at
least those supported by dbi) front end to databases would be tre` cool
and useful to many. Dont get me wrong i like phpmyadmin but the response
time (and taxing of the server) is unfortunate. Kind of like this.
http://mysqlxpcom.mozdev.org/
I’ve done a similar thing w/ie/xml/xmlhttp - and it makes for a much
better user experience and does not beat up the server.
Oh and i was just kidding about the code poet part, so dont fret or
flame me.
Have you ever looked back at your own code and said…what the ? was i
smokin that day? Not me, Hal, if you are still looking for coders. ;0)
Ara.T.Howard wrote:
this makes me think - there is a lot of presentaion material out there
praising ruby (matz’s slides, pragmatic programmer stuff, personal
[…]That’s a great thing to do. But actually what I long for is a killer app
for us to brag, a poster child for Ruby greatness, a popular app that
Many of the really nice apps are for programmers, like REXML, YAML,
RDoc, and more, but one of my favourite apps at the moment is glark.
It is a highlighting grep with some borrowings from find to help
when doing recursive searches. And it is pure ruby.
Probably too sysadmin related to set the world alight. (And it would
be even nicer if someone could provide me with a way of getting the
WinXP Command Prompt (cmd.exe) to support ANSI colo(u)r. It has
been suggested that I modify config.sys, but I can find no docs
supporting that. But this is off topic.)
Rubric is another good one – a pure ruby news aggregator.
http://rubric.rubyforge.org/
Hugh
On Fri, 7 May 2004, David Garamond wrote:
Sean Russell wrote:
James Britt jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com wrote in message news:409A3F01.6070302@neurogami.com…
About a month ago I interviewed a number of candidates for a Java
developer position.James… dude… why do you never call me when these things come up?
A month ago I was sitting here, on the couch watching endless “Buffy”
DVDs from NetFlix, eating bon-bons and busily being unemployed.Don’t you love me anymore?!?
Hey, if I had known you’d be interested in a job in Phoenix, I’d have
put the word in and given you a yell. It was Java work, but I was
slipping in Ruby to test Web pages.
BTW, it was 100 degrees F. here yesterday.
…
And this is not a jab at Java; I would think that anybody deeply
familiar with a language would have a few things things they disliked
about it, even if, on the whole, they loved the language.Good point. So, I hereby proclaim this the first annual J.B. Ruby
Roast.
J.B. Roast, huh?
Come on, cough up. What don’t you like about Ruby?
I think my biggest gripes are slowly becoming history. Poor or
non-existent documentation made it hard to use certain features, and
hard for others to join the fun. But that’s improving daily.
Lack of native threads and lack of Unicode support are downers.
James
Minnie Pearl?
– Matt
The American Non-Sequiteur Society: We may not make sense, but we do like
pizza.
On Sat, 8 May 2004, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
Robert Klemme wrote:
Sounds like a nice subject for a thesis: investigation about the
correspondece between programming language success and similarly named
popular musical artists.Lessee, Dylan? Uh, oh, a counterexample.
I tend to use assertions when I want stronger checking:
if $DEBUG then
def assert( &block )
return true if block.call()
assertion_failure
end
else
def assert()
end
end
xxx
assert { x.kind_of? y }
xxx
With checks turned off there is still a small overhead. I
don’t know how to totally remove it.
Assertions can check other things, not just type.
Additionnaly they have some value as “comments”.
I believe that I would introduce “Design by Contract” to
any one that would reject Ruby because of type checking (lack of).
With assertions you can do type checking and more.
See also http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?DesignByContract
Yours,
Jean-Hugues
At 09:58 07/05/2004 +0900, you wrote:
James Britt jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com wrote in message
news:409A3F01.6070302@neurogami.com…About a month ago I interviewed a number of candidates for a Java
developer position.James… dude… why do you never call me when these things come up?
A month ago I was sitting here, on the couch watching endless “Buffy”
DVDs from NetFlix, eating bon-bons and busily being unemployed.Don’t you love me anymore?!?
Aside from the usual tech questions, I asked them what they didn’t like
about the language. Most of them had a hard time thinking of anything.Oh, heck… I was a shoe-in for that job. I could have given you an
earful.And this is not a jab at Java; I would think that anybody deeply
familiar with a language would have a few things things they disliked
about it, even if, on the whole, they loved the language.Good point. So, I hereby proclaim this the first annual J.B. Ruby
Roast. Come on, cough up. What don’t you like about Ruby?I’ll start it off with my favorite: the missing type checker. I’d
like “-c” to also check types, as much as it can. It should be
doable, too; Ruby will never be strongly typed, but it should be
possible to Duck-check the Duck-types in a large number of cases.— SER
Web: http://hdl.handle.net/1030.37/1.1
Phone: +33 (0) 4 92 27 74 17
[snip]
BTW: I love Ruby more than any other thing I have loved earlier.
I expect to extend my relationship with Ruby in the future, getting married,
having children… etc. Ruby is like Britney Spears.FYI today at 2250 after work in airport, I was putting lights on my bike, and
suddenly britney + crew + papparatizs showed up.
I have now been within 5 meters of Britney Spears!!! I still chocked.
Doesn’t that violate your restraining order ? 
–
I think sex is better than logic, but I can’t prove it.
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
Ummm, folks, this is getting a bit tedious. You’re “preaching to the
choir”. I’ve already made the decision to use Ruby, I don’t need my inbox
filled up with more email about how great Ruby is, I already know.
This isn’t intended to be a flame, please don’t take it that way.
– Matt
The American Non-Sequiteur Society: We may not make sense, but we do like
pizza.
gabriele renzi surrender_it@remove.yahoo.it wrote in message news:crqk90p59cb75ge8kna8fnmk6kv7rl28kp@4ax.com…
that is a nice idea, But I wonder: what could be distilled in this
‘selling rubys’ project that could not be done via ruby-lang.org or
rubygarden ?
There are a couple of things missing that I think they’re trying to
address. One of them is a professional, slick slideshow presentation
(with presentation notes) discussing Ruby’s advantages in clear
language. For maximum effectiveness, it would also honestly list
Ruby’s weaknesses, too – when not to use Ruby.
I think this is a good idea, although I have my doubts about how
effective a one-size-fits-all approach to presentations is. At the
very least, you’d need different presentations; you wouldn’t give the
same presentation to a VP, to a manager, to a tech lead, to a
salesperson, and to a developer. They’ll each want different levels
of detail, different language, and will be motivated by different
aspects. One of the rules of selling any product is to pick one idea,
and focus on it. More importantly, successfull presentations are
tailored to their audience. If you’re in the pharmaceuticals
industry, you’ll use different vocabulary and different examples than
if you were giving the presentation to a group of people from the
automotive industry. Heck, you’ll pitch it differently if you’re
pitching to Java people than if you were pitching to C people.
Still, it is a worthy pursuit.
— SER
Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng wrote:
[snip]
It is a highlighting grep with some borrowings from find to help
when doing recursive searches. And it is pure ruby.[…] (And it would be even nicer if someone could provide me
with a way of getting the WinXP Command Prompt (cmd.exe) to
support ANSI colo(u)r. It has been suggested that I modify
config.sys, but I can find no docs supporting that.
But this is off topic.)
Thread is already [OT], let’s party on 
This isn’t the most authorative-looking page I could find,
but it appears correct.
http://www.o2post.com/kuban/ansi/ansi.htm
–
daz
Dick Davies wrote:
- Simon Strandgaard neoneye@adslhome.dk [0554 22:54]:
[snip]
BTW: I love Ruby more than any other thing I have loved earlier.
I expect to extend my relationship with Ruby in the future, getting married,
having children… etc. Ruby is like Britney Spears.FYI today at 2250 after work in airport, I was putting lights on my bike, and
suddenly britney + crew + papparatizs showed up.
I have now been within 5 meters of Britney Spears!!! I still chocked.Doesn’t that violate your restraining order ?
I am a smart guy, I have never been captured.
Damn, if just I had yelled at her: “please help promote Ruby for me”…
–
Simon Strandgaard
Jean-Hugues ROBERT jean_hugues_robert@yahoo.com wrote in message news:6.0.1.1.0.20040508082021.01d58558@pop.mail.yahoo.com…
I tend to use assertions when I want stronger checking:
Assertions are good, and useful, but they require a lot of extra
typing on the part of the developer – a lot of redundant typing.
Type checking can require no additional effort by the programmer.
— SER
Matt Lawrence wrote:
Ummm, folks, this is getting a bit tedious. You’re “preaching to the
choir”. I’ve already made the decision to use Ruby, I don’t need
my inbox
filled up with more email about how great Ruby is, I already know.This isn’t intended to be a flame, please don’t take it that way.
That is why I changed the subject. What this new topic is about promoting
Ruby to those who are not in the choir. All of us in the choir would like
to be able to use Ruby for our daily paying work. Some people are better
than others at producing convincing material to promote the use of Ruby to
the decision-makers. This is where a collective effort can really pay off.
I want to address the practical aspects of getting Ruby more widely adopted
in the workplace. I don’t expect this to be easy or fast – but you’ve got
to start somewhere.
Curt
Sean Russell wrote:
gabriele renzi surrender_it@remove.yahoo.it wrote in message
news:crqk90p59cb75ge8kna8fnmk6kv7rl28kp@4ax.com…that is a nice idea, But I wonder: what could be distilled in this
‘selling rubys’ project that could not be done via ruby-lang.org or
rubygarden ?There are a couple of things missing that I think they’re trying to
address. One of them is a professional, slick slideshow presentation
(with presentation notes) discussing Ruby’s advantages in clear
language. For maximum effectiveness, it would also honestly list
Ruby’s weaknesses, too – when not to use Ruby.I think this is a good idea, although I have my doubts about how
effective a one-size-fits-all approach to presentations is. At the
very least, you’d need different presentations; you wouldn’t give the
same presentation to a VP, to a manager, to a tech lead, to a
salesperson, and to a developer. They’ll each want different levels
of detail, different language, and will be motivated by different
aspects. One of the rules of selling any product is to pick one idea,
and focus on it. More importantly, successfull presentations are
tailored to their audience. If you’re in the pharmaceuticals
industry, you’ll use different vocabulary and different examples than
if you were giving the presentation to a group of people from the
automotive industry. Heck, you’ll pitch it differently if you’re
pitching to Java people than if you were pitching to C people.Still, it is a worthy pursuit.
I agree with everything you’ve said.
However, I wasn’t really thinking of a one-size fits all approach. Perhaps a
few sample end-to-end presentations for different audiences, but also a
repository of source material from which people could pick and choose
various things to help them put together their own custom presentation.
Curt
Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng wrote:
[…] (And it would be even nicer if someone could provide me
with a way of getting the WinXP Command Prompt (cmd.exe) to
support ANSI colo(u)r. It has been suggested that I modify
config.sys, but I can find no docs supporting that.
But this is off topic.)Thread is already [OT], let’s party on
OK
This isn’t the most authorative-looking page I could find,
but it appears correct.
Googling further as a result suggests that config.nt replaces
config.sys, but putting device=%systemroot%system32\ansi.sys (or
similar) in there will only affect command.com, not the cmd.exe
command prompt. A good summary of this seems to be
http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/818790
but most of it passes me by as I can’t read the language, which
looks to me as though it is Dutch.
This lack of support in cmd.exe amazes me: PCs have supported colour
since the late 80’s… I could see nothing from Microsoft on the
topic, not even deprecating its use, for some reason.
On Sat, 8 May 2004, daz wrote:
–
daz
Type checking can require no additional effort by the programmer.
Why does that somehow sound in violation of at least one of the
laws of thermodynamics? …
Happy Rubying,
Bill
So, Sean, what kind of type checking would you like to see in Ruby?
And what kind of type checking do you thikn is possible?
Cheers,
Gavin
On Thursday, May 13, 2004, 8:18:52 AM, Sean wrote:
Jean-Hugues ROBERT jean_hugues_robert@yahoo.com wrote in
message
news:6.0.1.1.0.20040508082021.01d58558@pop.mail.yahoo.com…I tend to use assertions when I want stronger checking:
Assertions are good, and useful, but they require a lot of extra
typing on the part of the developer – a lot of redundant typing.
Type checking can require no additional effort by the programmer.
I agree. Here’s what I see:
Ruby, the language, is wonderful
Ruby, the environment, needs work on both the available libraries and
their associated documentation. I’m a systems admin, not a brilliant
programmer, so things that may seem intuitively obvious to y’all are
seriously confusing to me.
Ruby, the distribution, needs more binary packages available. I have over
150 AIX systems that I would love to install Ruby on, but I know very
little about how to create a .bff (aka “installp” format) package. And,
unfortunately, not a lot of time to mess with it.
IBM now distributes CDs of Open Source software along with their AIX
install CDs. Getting Ruby onto those would be fantastic!
– Matt
The American Non-Sequiteur Society: We may not make sense, but we do like
pizza.
On Fri, 7 May 2004, Curt Hibbs wrote:
That is why I changed the subject. What this new topic is about promoting
Ruby to those who are not in the choir. All of us in the choir would like
to be able to use Ruby for our daily paying work. Some people are better
than others at producing convincing material to promote the use of Ruby to
the decision-makers. This is where a collective effort can really pay off.I want to address the practical aspects of getting Ruby more widely adopted
in the workplace. I don’t expect this to be easy or fast – but you’ve got
to start somewhere.
Hugh Sasse wrote:
Googling further as a result suggests that config.nt replaces
config.sys, but putting device=%systemroot%system32\ansi.sys (or
similar) in there will only affect command.com, not the cmd.exe
command prompt. A good summary of this seems to be[WinXP] ANSI-escape codes gebruiken voor kleurtjes onder cmd - Windows clients - GoT
but most of it passes me by as I can’t read the language, which
looks to me as though it is Dutch.
Babelfish agrees, mainly.
One reply from the original poster says:
By MUBA - Wednesday 08 October 2003 02.11
Ah!
I beautiful work-around have found!
From cmd.exe you (of course! can) command.com call.
And then works everything, however, good.
From cmd.exe batch call echo with as contents
’ command/c dingetjes in {ESC}[32mkleur!’ works, however.
Therefore I will to that prints mn perl-script so convert where
ansi come look at echo going at, by means of command.coms.
Probably none neat or beautiful solution, but I get what I have wanted: COLOUR!
BTW: The Perl module they speak of has a Ruby port:
[ANN] http://ruby-talk.org/89997
http://rubyforge.org/projects/win32console/
(by Gonzalo Garramuno using the Michael L. Semon library)
I was prepared for this not to work for me when I tried it
(with no ANSI.SYS loaded) and found that it did (Win9x).
This lack of support in cmd.exe amazes me: PCs have supported colour
since the late 80’s… I could see nothing from Microsoft on the
topic, not even deprecating its use, for some reason.
They confirm the shocking news:
(mentioned in the page you linked to)
daz
