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For every enthusiastic attendee at a Ruby conference, there are a hundred people who have tried Ruby and walked away. There's also at least one person who's hit the top of Hacker News complaining about it. Are missing features or poor performance chasing people off? Is the community too international, or not responsive enough on GitHub? Maybe the problem is the ones who walk away — the inexperienced masses, poisoned by Flash, Visual Basic and PHP. Help us caption & translate this video! http://amara.org/v/FG7g/
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In her presentation at GoGaRuCo 2013, Sarah Mei explores the reasons why Ruby, despite its popularity among supporters, struggles to attract and retain new users. She opens with an insightful reflection on the discrepancy between dedicated Ruby conference attendees and the many who have tried Ruby and moved on, often sharing their grievances online. The talk aims to uncover social and non-technical influences impacting language adoption decisions over technical features alone. **Key Points:** - **Ruby's Community Perception:** Mei highlights a culture within both the Ruby community and external perceptions reflected in platforms like Hacker News, where Ruby is often criticized, and potential users are dismissed based on prior programming experiences with languages like PHP and Flash. - **Evaluating Languages and Gems:** Mei discusses the process developers undergo when evaluating programming languages, which often draws upon subconscious expectations shaped by previous experiences. Her investigation into how developers assess Ruby gems reveals insights into how social factors more profoundly affect decision-making than technical merits. - **Factors Influencing Decisions:** Mei introduces four categories that emerge from her findings regarding gem evaluation: - **Interface:** The gem's external functionality. - **Activity:** The activity level of the project, including how often it is updated and community responsiveness. - **Popularity:** Consensus among other developers and ease of finding support or documentation. - **Familiarity:** How similarities in coding practices influence preference, emphasizing that people lean toward code that feels familiar. - **Learning and Mastery in Programming:** Further, Mei connects the concept of successful programming not just to time invested (the 10,000-hour rule) but rather to the diversity of programming experiences. She asserts that exposure to different coding environments accelerates learning and development far more than solely accumulating hours. - **Conclusions on Ruby's Future:** Ultimately, Mei emphasizes that Ruby's ability to compete with languages like JavaScript hinges not just on technical capabilities but deeper social familiarity and collective team experiences. She asserts that bridging diverse programming backgrounds will be vital to Ruby's retention and growth. To this end, she encourages developers to explore other languages to enhance their coding intuition, thereby enriching their return to Ruby. Ultimately, the takeaway is that, to revitalize Ruby's standing, a more inclusive and exploratory learning approach is essential, which can positively shape the language's community dynamics and user experience.
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