We really need to start surveying real statistics on
what programming
languages community members know.
I've seen this assertion waved around again and again, but don't see where
it originates from, besides the very unreliable fact that we just don't talk
much about ruby around here.
I for one know ruby. And frankly ruby isn't like our other issue. Ruby is
nothing like how hard OCaml would be to learn and maintain.
We really should beat down this notion that anything written in ruby should
be avoided. I don't like how we reject the possibility of using well written
existing open-source projects simply because they were written using ruby.
It's almost as bad as NIH.
How many languages can we reasonably support? We're currently using
PHP, Python, Java, OCaml and Javascript (and probably more). Should we
also throw Ruby in here as well? What level of support are the
Selenium tests really going to get if they require developers to use
Ruby?
We've already gone down the Ruby road once. I think a lot of the
people involved with that would say it was a bad call, especially ops.
- Ryan