Riding the Rails to Denver: Day 1

Denver is beautiful in the fall. The sky is clear, it's 61 F., and from behind the stark and rugged Rocky Mountains the clouds bringing this weekend's projected snow are looming like bread rising out of the bowl.

RubyConf 2006 starts in Denver today. Several hundred male Rubyists and at least one female Rubyist are in attendance. Many stars -- Yukihiro "matz" Matsumoto (Ruby's chief designer), of course, with Mike Clark, Glen Vandeburg, Pat Eyler, Marcel Molina, Rich Kilmer and others -- of the Ruby and Ruby-on-Rails movement are there.

We are treated to one very funny "History of Ruby" by Masayoshi Takahashi in the opening session.

Funny? Well, yes, his mordant self-deprecating humor flavored by the concious satirical delivery of his rudimentary English is funny. But it's poignant and fraught with meaning for our transnational community of computer programming as he tells us:

The development community in Japan is the Ruby community. Imagine a world where everyone speaks Japanese, all the programming languages are taught in Japanese, all the books and the Internet are in Japanese, and you only speak English. For us, the choice is often, 'Learn Ruby or learn English'.

More later. I'm actually a working developer and have to put in some hours today. I'm scheduled to chat with Matz later today. I also am going to try to round me up one more Ruby programmer.

Posted by Jack Woehr at 02:40 PM  Permalink

This is a public forum. CMP Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. CMP Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers.

Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of CMP Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in CMP Media's Terms of Service.

Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.