The KurtWerks Tinfoil Hat

[almaw@comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "A. Khattri" <ajai at bway.net>
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, Kurt Wall wrote:
> 
> > So, BookScan indicates that more Ruby than Python books sold in
> > December. That's totally congruent with "the new shiny thing" theory
> > I maintain.
> 
> If there was a company (like say Sun), hyping something (like, say, Java)
> to death then yes it would be a "shiny new thing" and all the media would
> go on and on about it. But most of the talk about Rails has been from
> developers playing with it, using it, building stuff, not from a marketing
> droid. Big difference. There is no big company banging the Rails drum.
> There's only one or two books on Rails and less than a handful on Ruby
> (but I think that has a lot to with the lack of English language
> documentation and the "not-invented-here" syndrome so prevalent in the
> West).
> 
> > Rather, it's got a large
> > mountain to climb before the installed base gets anywhere near that of
> > "traditional" LAMP.
> 
> That's kind of stating the obvious. While Ruby has been around for 10
> years or so (about the same as Python I think), Rails is relatively new
> (1.0 just came out in December) so yeah it will be awhile before it
> becomes more widely known but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a lot of
> good ideas in it, put together in a well thought out way. Anyway it was
> intriguing enough for an old fart like me to have a look.

Since when has Good Ideas been the standard for sucessful products?  On of the nicest systems I ever programmed on was OS/2.  It had a clear, consistent API and everything worked.

FWIW, all the local web developers I know are either doing PHP or zope/plone, I only see ruby or python talked about in the press or here.

I am not sure about NIH for programmers.  It is quite true that the overwhelming majority of programmers have english language skills in common, so english/american documentation is crucial to any widespread usage.  But, if the language makes programming easier, or violate the principle of the Conservation of Hair, programmers will flock to it.  OTOH, there is still lots of programming done in Cobol and Fortran.

I need to pick up [V]HDL this semester, can anyone recomend a good manual or tutorial?

    -- Alma