Codefol.io

I’m going to tell two stories about the Ruby community. One happened this past May (2018), and another happened in 2007. Both are about the Ruby community. Both are about what we did and what we stand to lose. Both are about trolls and how we handle them.

One story is small, recent and has a happy...

personal rubycommunity

Python is an experiment in how much freedom programmers need. Too much freedom and nobody can read another’s code; too little and expressiveness is endangered.

Ruby, on the other hand, is an experiment in “give every toddler a chainsaw”...

ruby rubycommunity

Five minutes on the Internet will find you somebody who thinks Ruby shouldn’t exist and is clearly inferior (try it!). Or pick a big tech company, especially an “Enterprise” company. Same thing – you’ll find a Ruby-hater in five minutes if you’re actually trying.

If Rubyists keep doing the right thing, this will be true forever. Let me explain.

What Ruby Rocks At

There’s a set of things Ruby is really good at. I’ll list some of them:

• Prototyping new ideas
• Anything web or HTTP
• Stuff that doesn’t need to be fast
• Reading other people’s code - Ruby is short and readable.
• Building tools and libraries, especially DSLs.

There are some other things Ruby is “good” at. Like, it’s good at them but many people think they’re a bad idea. I’ll list some of those, too:

ruby rubycommunity

Ruby and Python, so similar and so different. By which I mean, “the languages let you do the same things in most of the same ways, but the communities are utterly different.”

Community Mores

Python says, there should be one — and preferably only one — obvious way to do it.

Ruby, like Perl, says...

ruby rubycommunity