Open letter to Ruby spammers

[fishiface]

We have seen an increasing number of Ruby solutions posted in this forum. I do not believe that they are accidental (we never see, for example, Python solutions) so I have to consider them as either crowing or evangelising.

If they are crowing (Look how easily we can do this while you have to struggle..) then they are completely unhelpful. Even where the syntax seems cleaner, there are numerous reasons why one might choose any particular language over another and it is only through knowing a language well that one can make an intelligent selection. Let us learn perl in the perl forum - you never know: if we are into comparative linguistics, we might be simultaneously learning Ruby in the Ruby forum.

If they are evangelising, then they are useless. They never explain why their solutions are better than the comparable perl solutions and merely exhibit syntax. Even if they did make a valid point, this would not be the place to make it. Start a Ruby.vs.Perl forum, if you wish, and then people who are interested in your ideas can find them easily and there would be, hopefully, helpful debate rather than mere hectoring.

Languages have communities and cultures. I don't know the Ruby culture but genuinely believe that the Perl community is not impressed by these posts or the attitudes that appear to motivate them.

In short, they are spam. I ask the Ruby community to voluntarily stop posting Ruby solutions in the Perl forum but also give notice that I intend to start red-flagging those that I do see.

If I have mistaken the attitudes of the regular users of this group, then please feel free to contradict me. I will certainly back down if my opinion is unrepresentative and there is genuine interest in these posts.

Yours,

fish

["]As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.["]
--Maur

 

[ishnid]

Nice letter - this would pretty accurately reflect my own opinions on the matter too.

I've said a couple of times that I don't mind solutions being posted in other languages where they're being used to illustrate a suggested algorithm (i.e. they're effectively being used as pseudocode when the problem is logic related, rather than one of implementation). However, this isn't the case with any of the recent Ruby posts I've seen.

I'd love to see a response on this, as I'm curious as to what people feel they're achieving with this spamming. It seems like a tremendous waste of time to me.

 

[KevinADC]

Considering it's almost surely just one person signing up with a new alias over and over, I don't see this as an indication of the ruby coders culture. This is the culture of one rather sad individual.

I'm not to sure Tek-Tips will appreciate this thread though and will not be surprised to see it vanish.

 

[ishnid]

I'm sure the moderators are as sick of deleting these Ruby posts and banning the individual involved as we are. Perhaps this can stay open for a little while at least.

 

[KevinADC]

yea I'm sure they are ishnid. Too bad people can't effectively be banned from forums.

The person had been asked courteously by several of the perl forum regulars to not post ruby code here, he ignored all those requests. He was then asked more directly to stop it, given an explanation as to why, his posts have been removed by Tek-Tips personel, and I assume all the aliases he has used have been deleted, and he still persists.

It's not ruby or the ruby culture (IMHO), the guy is just a ashole. Period.

 

[MikeLacey]

Just keep on red-flagging any off-topic threads - they will disappear.

Like this one probably

Mike

You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
original Klingon.

Want great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at faq219-2884

 

[fishiface]

Thanks for the feedback. I wanted to take a quick straw-poll before starting to red-flag them and make sure that my attitude wasn't unrepresentative.

I'm a strong believer in free speech but feel that this site offers adequate opportunities to create more appropriate fora for such expression.

I'm sorry if I cast aspersions on the Ruby culture - I was on my soapbox.

To the moderators: I have no problem with you deleting this thread if you wish. It has served it's purpose.

Yours,

fish

["]As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.["]
--Maur

 

[TrojanWarBlade]

I thought I'd sit back and wait to see if this thread took abuse or was removed but I'm surprised to see it survive unscathed!
I guess I'm just dropping a note to say that I support these suggestions and I'm sure you guys have seen how annoyed I have been on occasion with these pointless ruby posts.
I've said before that I was very intersted in the language and would have been very tempted to add it to my arsenal but the attitudes expressed by this individual have put me off bothering.
Also there have been less than 10 ruby posts in the ruby forum this year so I think it proves that generally there is very little interest.
Maybe, with luck, he might follow some of the ideas in this thread and maybe he and others might learn something.
One final point: I can't understand why he hammers the perl group so heavily and hardly bothers with the Unix Scripting group which also seems to get lots of action. It seems the ideal place for ruby posts to me.
Maybe the perl group is just the most active and he's jelous. ;-)



Trojan.

 

[kordaff]

Wonder if he's the same guy that posts so many ruby solutions in comp.lang.perl.misc...

Kordaff