Ironruby core - Nov 2009 - How do you convince .Net developers to use IronRuby?

Hi there,

In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in front of
.Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it very very hard
to pass that to existing .Net developers.
I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster (like
POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#, IR and
Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get out
of their familiar development environment even when they see the clear
benefits of the new technology.
They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them -
Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.

That''s about what happens during a session:
- No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to leave.
- No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
- Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.

That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using
IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.

My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers?
and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net devs will
start using IronRuby?

Thanks!
Shay.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Shay Friedman
Author of IronRuby Unleashed
http://www.IronShay.com
Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
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I think Time will be the most important ingredient in getting people
amped on IR. It''s probably too early to expect incredible enthusiasm
from users groups. IronRuby, lacking VS integration and with all the
command line stuff, doesn''t demo in the usual Microsoft fashion, so it
might be hard to wow the rank and file. If you do want to get people
excited in a demo, I''d demo in the context of C# 4.0, so you can demo
inside visual studio, and let people see IronRuby shine from within a
familiar environment. Also, ASP.NET MVC with IronRuby might resonate
better than RoR at first, and you could also try demo''ing with
something
like RubyMine, that does have intellisense and refactorings.

 

To get IronRuby to spread, I would focus on selling IronRuby proper to
the vanguard (Alt).NET communities, their bloggers, thought leaders,
etc. who have large followings among progressive developers. They should
immediately be able to get over the lack of "tooling sugar" to see the
value IronRuby has to offer. I''d start with the testing aspects,
Cucumber, RSpec, etc. as well as Rake and its superior abilities in
creating dev tools and build automations and things, then move on to
scripting & automating existing .NET apps. I think RoR and other pure
Ruby concepts are a bit out of range for most .NET folks just now, and
anyway if they did want to start building those kinds of pure Ruby
applications in IronRuby, they''d run into some brick walls and may drop
out prematurely. From what I can tell IronRuby isn''t quite ready for
real, full scale Ruby development - a hefty portion of the things I try
don''t work on IronRuby yet, simply because the language isn''t
complete
(String#unpack, File#flock, etc) and because the community hasn''t
caught
up (DataMapper integrations, C# ports of native libraries, etc).

 

Finally, you may want to ask the JRuby community how they did it. Of
coure, Java devs by and large may be much more comfortable with command
line work, but the situation is largely the same I would think.

 

All in all, though, I think it is still very early to expect too much.
Hopefully, as the early adopter types start to pick this thing up and
get excited about it, they will spread the excitement - I think it is
more likely to get into people''s heads that way, rather than user group
presentations. At the same time, MS will continue to improve their
tooling, JetBrains may build their RubyMine product as a VS integration
when IronRuby is more mature, and demos can get flashier. That will help
some too. That''s my guess anyway. 

 

 

 

 

 

From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org
[mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of Shay Friedman
Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 7:07 AM
To: ironruby-core
Subject: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to use
IronRuby?

 

Hi there,

In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in front
of .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it very
very hard to pass that to existing .Net developers.
I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster
(like POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#, IR
and Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get
out of their familiar development environment even when they see the
clear benefits of the new technology.
They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them -
Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.

That''s about what happens during a session:
- No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to
leave.
- No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
- Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.

That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using
IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.

My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net
developers? 
and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net devs
will start using IronRuby? 

Thanks!
Shay.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Shay Friedman
Author of IronRuby Unleashed
http://www.IronShay.com
Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay

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AFAICT you don''t, they''ll have to convince themselves. I may
have given this
issue some thought before today :)

One of the problems I have with most of the .NET shops these days is that
they are very conservative. I''m having countless discussions on the
benefits
of unit testing, stored procs vs OR/M, ...

then the developers have been misled into believing intellisense actually
helps them while all they are missing is a tool that lets them find api docs
fast (msdn isn''t it although the new version is a lot faster), because
intellisense gets more in the way than out of it.  The same way they have
been misled into believing static typing is the shiznit.
It took me 6 months of daily scavenging the net for an IDE and eventually I
just bought a mac so I could use textmate and be done with it.

Before we can get ironruby to not be perceived as a "hippy" language
there
are a few things that need to happen:

1. .net 4.0 needs to be out (preferrably with a service release or 2) so
they can use it from their C# visual studio project.
2. we need a textmate/rubymate like autocomplete in visual studio that will
just tokenize the words in a document or open documents and puts some
heuristics around which one you are most likely to use.
3. IronRuby needs to be labelled 1.0 (preferably with a SP1 stamp)
4. visual studio must not insert a BOM in the files it creates (this is
solved by creating ruby file templates see ironrubymvc project).
5. We need an example application that when compared to the C# one has
obvious benefits. It would be good to have some kind of build off,
unfortunately the human factor makes that non deterministic and subjective.
6. IronRuby startup time needs to get a _lot_ faster, because antonio
cangiani''s benchmark might show different results but for me running a
spec
suite with ironruby and one with ruby 1.9 is a difference of 2 minutes vs 10
seconds, mostly because of startup time. but that totally kills the rapid
feedback cycle you want.
7. blog, speak, write, convert them one at a time I say :)


I see ironruby creeping in the enterprise via 4 ways:
1. using as a test framework for their apps (and even then perhaps only the
fan boys at first)
2. a much better nant because nobody likes writing xml
3. for rules engines where the user can define the rules, or as plugins for
existing applications
4. Quicker prototyping

This is one of those things that isn''t going to happen overnight, and
the
early hype around IronRuby didn''t really help the situation.  So that
means
we still have a lot of work todo. Writing, blogging, speaking about IronRuby
is a necessity but also making sure the experience is optimal makes a big
difference.

If you want to be an agent for change you''ll have to realize that that
is a
very frustrating position to be in because all you will face is resistance
-being in the front line and all-, but if you take a step back then
you''ll
see that usage of ironruby has grown quite a bit in recent months and as the
implementation progresses it will increase more and faster ( a little bit
like a snow ball).
Also change doesn''t happen on the spot. For example I will get
frustrated
and stop my contract but when I talk to that company one year later it turns
out they are actually implementing what I had been fighting for the year
before. I lack patience and tact to be really good at changing mindsets :).
There is some ruby envy in the clr community though. I say ruby envy because
they refuse to move out of C# but wish C# has all the things ruby has but
with the wonderful C# syntax.

To give an example of the mindset:

The microsoft belgium people almost laughed at me when I told them I was
going to write a real app in IronRuby when I applied for bizspark.

I don''t see command line as a problem because as the guys from sapphire
steel have shown they can integrate that quite good , rubymine and netbeans
show that too. I''m just faster with the command line and I feel like
I''m in
control (which in reality I''m not of course)

I also agree with Nathan IronRuby isn''t ready for prime-time
mass-adoption
yet.
---
Met vriendelijke groeten - Best regards - Salutations
Ivan Porto Carrero
Blog: http://flanders.co.nz
Twitter: http://twitter.com/casualjim
Author of IronRuby in Action (http://manning.com/carrero)



On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Shay Friedman <shay.friedman at
gmail.com>wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in front of
> .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it very very
hard
> to pass that to existing .Net developers.
> I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster (like
> POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#, IR and
> Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
> Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get out
> of their familiar development environment even when they see the clear
> benefits of the new technology.
> They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them -
> Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.
>
> That''s about what happens during a session:
> - No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to leave.
> - No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
> - Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.
>
> That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using
> IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.
>
> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers?
>
> and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net devs
> will start using IronRuby?
>
> Thanks!
> Shay.
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------
> Shay Friedman
> Author of IronRuby Unleashed
> http://www.IronShay.com
> Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>
>
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1. Quick construction/prototyping,
2. Slow maintenance

no one building a real enterprise application with intricate licensing and
SLAs will settle for (2).

when i think about ironruby in a .net environment - i think web, and
embedded scripting extensions / DSLs in a "real" .Net app. thats your
audience.


On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Nathan Stults
<Nathan_Stults at hsihealth.com>wrote:
>  I think Time will be the most important ingredient in getting people
> amped on IR. It?s probably too early to expect incredible enthusiasm from
> users groups. IronRuby, lacking VS integration and with all the command
line
> stuff, doesn?t demo in the usual Microsoft fashion, so it might be hard to
> wow the rank and file. If you do want to get people excited in a demo, I?d
> demo in the context of C# 4.0, so you can demo inside visual studio, and
let
> people see IronRuby shine from within a familiar environment. Also,
> ASP.NET MVC with IronRuby might resonate better than RoR at first, and you
> could also try demo?ing with something like RubyMine, that does have
> intellisense and refactorings.
>
>
>
> To get IronRuby to spread, I would focus on selling IronRuby proper to the
> vanguard (Alt).NET communities, their bloggers, thought leaders, etc. who
> have large followings among progressive developers. They should immediately
> be able to get over the lack of ?tooling sugar? to see the value IronRuby
> has to offer. I?d start with the testing aspects, Cucumber, RSpec, etc. as
> well as Rake and its superior abilities in creating dev tools and build
> automations and things, then move on to scripting & automating existing
.NET
> apps. I think RoR and other pure Ruby concepts are a bit out of range for
> most .NET folks just now, and anyway if they did want to start building
> those kinds of pure Ruby applications in IronRuby, they?d run into some
> brick walls and may drop out prematurely. From what I can tell IronRuby
> isn?t quite ready for real, full scale Ruby development ? a hefty portion
of
> the things I try don?t work on IronRuby yet, simply because the language
> isn?t complete (String#unpack, File#flock, etc) and because the community
> hasn?t caught up (DataMapper integrations, C# ports of native libraries,
> etc).
>
>
>
> Finally, you may want to ask the JRuby community how they did it. Of coure,
> Java devs by and large may be much more comfortable with command line work,
> but the situation is largely the same I would think.
>
>
>
> All in all, though, I think it is still very early to expect too much.
> Hopefully, as the early adopter types start to pick this thing up and get
> excited about it, they will spread the excitement ? I think it is more
> likely to get into people?s heads that way, rather than user group
> presentations. At the same time, MS will continue to improve their tooling,
> JetBrains may build their RubyMine product as a VS integration when
IronRuby
> is more mature, and demos can get flashier. That will help some too. That?s
> my guess anyway.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org [mailto:
> ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] *On Behalf Of *Shay Friedman
> *Sent:* Monday, November 02, 2009 7:07 AM
> *To:* ironruby-core
> *Subject:* [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to use
> IronRuby?
>
>
>
> Hi there,
>
> In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in front of
> .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it very very
hard
> to pass that to existing .Net developers.
> I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster (like
> POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#, IR and
> Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
> Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get out
> of their familiar development environment even when they see the clear
> benefits of the new technology.
> They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them -
> Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.
>
> That''s about what happens during a session:
> - No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to leave.
> - No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
> - Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.
>
> That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using
> IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.
>
> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers?
>
> and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net devs
> will start using IronRuby?
>
> Thanks!
> Shay.
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------
> Shay Friedman
> Author of IronRuby Unleashed
> http://www.IronShay.com
> Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>
>
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2009/11/3 Shay Friedman <shay.friedman at
gmail.com>:
> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers?
I''d wait a bit more before the implementation matures. In my opinion,
IronRuby is doing pretty well, compared to IronPython in its pre-1.0
days with similar implementation maturity. You could even say IronRuby
is doing *too* well, that is, generating unwarranted hypes.

-- 
Seo Sanghyeon

I haven''t been in the position to present on this, so please take my
observations with a grain of salt.
Personally, I''m a big fan of listening, and not so much on convincing.

You say the biggest group of people that leave is:

- No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to leave.

If possible, try to note a few of the people leaving and attempt
to catch up w/ them later (particularly good if you know them personally).

Don''t be confrontational, but try to genuinely dig into why they find
out
why they find Visual Studio integration to be such a big barrier.

Personally, I initially perceived this to be a big barrier to adopting
Ruby/IronRuby.
It was only once I started using it and experiencing the development flow myself
that I realized that this was mostly a non-issue.

You might be able to work with someone "on-stage" to walk them through
a very simple
development flow to help ease the fear of working without the IDE.
You might show right away that there is an MS Connect feature request
to add VS support - though this might drive some people away too ;)

In any case, I think talking to the people that are walking away and
taking their concerns seriously
(even though you may have gotten past those concerns yourself) will
put you in a MUCH
better position to sympathize with and understand those developers
that are walking away.

As a side-effect, you might be able to "convince" them to try IronRuby
too ;)

Best Regards, Kevin

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Seo Sanghyeon <sanxiyn at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2009/11/3 Shay Friedman <shay.friedman at gmail.com>:
>> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net
developers?
>
> I''d wait a bit more before the implementation matures. In my
opinion,
> IronRuby is doing pretty well, compared to IronPython in its pre-1.0
> days with similar implementation maturity. You could even say IronRuby
> is doing *too* well, that is, generating unwarranted hypes.
>
> --
> Seo Sanghyeon
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>

Don''t sell IronRuby, sell Ruby itself. It''s not hard to find
sample code (or
just refactor some existing C# code) where the ruby version is quarter the
size, and twice as readable than the C# version.

If you can convince people of the benefits of ruby, and then go "and now
here''s the party trick, you can integrate IronRuby with all your
existing C#
code for no effort" then I''ve found that works.

There are also a couple of areas where ruby really shines

1) Exploration. Irb is already pretty good at this, but a REALLY killer
feature would be integrated IronRuby in visual studio''s immediate
window
under the debugger.

2) Testing. Unfortunately this is harder to sell as if you''re testing
other
.NET code you really need the visual studio integration :-(
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Very quick thoughts:
- dynamic (ruby/python) is quite frightening for most .Net developers I know
(they tend to have a mostly static background, C C++ Java .Net)
- I tend to focus my energy on building useful stuff with X vs. advocating
the use of X (valid point for .Net in 2001, Rails in 2005, Pascal in 1993,
etc...). Even after seeing mind-changing implementations, most of the
developers won''t switch unless the change is enforced, somehow!
- I agree with Kevin: listening then explaining is usually far more
efficient as compared to convincing, which generates a strong force back.
- I agree that despite the huge work behind it and the reliability of IR,
we''re very early in its life. Most people I know will expect a 1.0
timestamp
before even trying to download the package.
- I would try hard *not* to make hype at all around IronRuby. I know
it''s
hard for book writers, early adopters etc, but honestly it tend to put too
much expectations, and it''s very quick to backfire with this. Just
providing
informational stuff, kind and useful, not "we''re better than
x" kind of
stuff, works best in my opinion.

Well this doesn''t give you a solution, but hopefully a few more points
to
think about :)

Thibaut
--
http://www.learnivore.com
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Thanks all for your replys. I might have been a bit harsh with the word I
chose... When I talk with .Net devs and present IronRuby to them, I
don''t
really want to "convince" them it''s the best language (it
can''t be, it''s an
entirely subjective opinion), I just try to add IronRuby to their list of
"to be interested in" stuff, a task which, as I wrote, I''m
not successful
with too much.

Regarding people leaving - they don''t really leave. Their attention
does :)
Trying to speak with most of them might be frustrating as well since most of
them doesn''t have something against IronRuby specifically,
it''s about a new
language in general. For example, one said to me "why does Microsoft
release
so much languages - D, F#, IronPython, IronRuby? all I need is C#"...

Anyway, from your answers I understand that I should not expect much of an
interest now. We are the front runners now BUT the rest WILL follow! :)

I''m a big believer in presentations and telling people about
technologies -
new or old. In my opinion, it is more effective than written articles (it
is, of course, not a substitute to the written word).
I try to talk wherever I can and my target is to push IronRuby to the
audience consciousness so when they need something IronRuby might really
help them in, it will jump to their mind. I plan to continue with that
(someone want to have me? :-) ) even though it is a bit frustrating
currently.

In conclusion, next time I''m doing an IronRuby presentation,
I''d try to do
as follows:
1. Show them demos in their "natural" environment - Visual Studio:
  - .Net 4.0
  - Running IronRuby from C#
  - Maybe configure VS to execute ir.exe and write the demo code inside VS
(as a regular txt file) - to eliminate command line :)
2. Show them Ruby test frameworks and test custom .Net code. My suggestion:
Cucumber.
3. Suggestion: show them how to install IronRuby from downloading until
running a Hello World sample.
4. DSLs - show them one heck of a DSL (a practical one).
5. Show how to use IronRuby for adding REPL abilities to a .Net application
or as an easy way to provide extension abilities to a .Net application.

IronRuby will prevail!!!
:)

Shay.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Shay Friedman
Author of IronRuby Unleashed
http://www.IronShay.com
Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Thibaut Barr?re
<thibaut.barrere at gmail.com>wrote:
> Very quick thoughts:
> - dynamic (ruby/python) is quite frightening for most .Net developers I
> know (they tend to have a mostly static background, C C++ Java .Net)
> - I tend to focus my energy on building useful stuff with X vs. advocating
> the use of X (valid point for .Net in 2001, Rails in 2005, Pascal in 1993,
> etc...). Even after seeing mind-changing implementations, most of the
> developers won''t switch unless the change is enforced, somehow!
> - I agree with Kevin: listening then explaining is usually far more
> efficient as compared to convincing, which generates a strong force back.
> - I agree that despite the huge work behind it and the reliability of IR,
> we''re very early in its life. Most people I know will expect a 1.0
timestamp
> before even trying to download the package.
> - I would try hard *not* to make hype at all around IronRuby. I know
it''s
> hard for book writers, early adopters etc, but honestly it tend to put too
> much expectations, and it''s very quick to backfire with this. Just
providing
> informational stuff, kind and useful, not "we''re better than
x" kind of
> stuff, works best in my opinion.
>
> Well this doesn''t give you a solution, but hopefully a few more
points to
> think about :)
>
> Thibaut
> --
> http://www.learnivore.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>
>
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Shay,
Based on your target audience I would do this agenda:

1. show a very intuitive DSL, go into source and expose ruby meta features,
mixins, "reflection"
2. show how you twist a ruby object from ir
3. Embedded ruby as an ability to add scripting to your app
4. rapid prototyping if time allows  (adding stuff to living instances and
watching it change)

PS (if you do this publicly in .il, i''d like to attend)


On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Shay Friedman <shay.friedman at
gmail.com>wrote:
> Thanks all for your replys. I might have been a bit harsh with the word I
> chose... When I talk with .Net devs and present IronRuby to them, I
don''t
> really want to "convince" them it''s the best language
(it can''t be, it''s an
> entirely subjective opinion), I just try to add IronRuby to their list of
> "to be interested in" stuff, a task which, as I wrote,
I''m not successful
> with too much.
>
> Regarding people leaving - they don''t really leave. Their
attention does :)
> Trying to speak with most of them might be frustrating as well since most
of
> them doesn''t have something against IronRuby specifically,
it''s about a new
> language in general. For example, one said to me "why does Microsoft
release
> so much languages - D, F#, IronPython, IronRuby? all I need is C#"...
>
> Anyway, from your answers I understand that I should not expect much of an
> interest now. We are the front runners now BUT the rest WILL follow! :)
>
> I''m a big believer in presentations and telling people about
technologies -
> new or old. In my opinion, it is more effective than written articles (it
> is, of course, not a substitute to the written word).
> I try to talk wherever I can and my target is to push IronRuby to the
> audience consciousness so when they need something IronRuby might really
> help them in, it will jump to their mind. I plan to continue with that
> (someone want to have me? :-) ) even though it is a bit frustrating
> currently.
>
> In conclusion, next time I''m doing an IronRuby presentation,
I''d try to do
> as follows:
> 1. Show them demos in their "natural" environment - Visual
Studio:
>   - .Net 4.0
>   - Running IronRuby from C#
>   - Maybe configure VS to execute ir.exe and write the demo code inside VS
> (as a regular txt file) - to eliminate command line :)
> 2. Show them Ruby test frameworks and test custom .Net code. My suggestion:
> Cucumber.
> 3. Suggestion: show them how to install IronRuby from downloading until
> running a Hello World sample.
> 4. DSLs - show them one heck of a DSL (a practical one).
> 5. Show how to use IronRuby for adding REPL abilities to a .Net application
> or as an easy way to provide extension abilities to a .Net application.
>
> IronRuby will prevail!!!
> :)
>
>
> Shay.
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------
> Shay Friedman
> Author of IronRuby Unleashed
> http://www.IronShay.com
> Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Thibaut Barr?re <thibaut.barrere at
gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Very quick thoughts:
>> - dynamic (ruby/python) is quite frightening for most .Net developers I
>> know (they tend to have a mostly static background, C C++ Java .Net)
>> - I tend to focus my energy on building useful stuff with X vs.
advocating
>> the use of X (valid point for .Net in 2001, Rails in 2005, Pascal in
1993,
>> etc...). Even after seeing mind-changing implementations, most of the
>> developers won''t switch unless the change is enforced,
somehow!
>> - I agree with Kevin: listening then explaining is usually far more
>> efficient as compared to convincing, which generates a strong force
back.
>> - I agree that despite the huge work behind it and the reliability of
IR,
>> we''re very early in its life. Most people I know will expect a
1.0 timestamp
>> before even trying to download the package.
>> - I would try hard *not* to make hype at all around IronRuby. I know
it''s
>> hard for book writers, early adopters etc, but honestly it tend to put
too
>> much expectations, and it''s very quick to backfire with this.
Just providing
>> informational stuff, kind and useful, not "we''re better
than x" kind of
>> stuff, works best in my opinion.
>>
>> Well this doesn''t give you a solution, but hopefully a few
more points to
>> think about :)
>>
>> Thibaut
>> --
>> http://www.learnivore.com
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ironruby-core mailing list
>> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>
>
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Re. Visual Studio integration. My company (SapphireSteel Software) 
released an alpha Visual Studio IDE for IronRuby about 18 months ago 
(Feb 2008): http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Ruby-In-Steel-For-IronRuby

At that time, we offered to work with the IronRuby team to develop a 
more powerful IDE but we received very little interest. As a result we 
transferred our efforts into a developing additional tools for our 
standard Ruby IDE and also creating a new Flex/ActionScript IDE for 
Visual Studio.

best wishes

Huw Collingbourne

http://www.sapphiresteel.com
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Huw Collingbourne <lists at
ruby-forum.com>wrote:
> Re. Visual Studio integration. My company (SapphireSteel Software)
> released an alpha Visual Studio IDE for IronRuby about 18 months ago
> (Feb 2008): http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Ruby-In-Steel-For-IronRuby
>
> At that time, we offered to work with the IronRuby team to develop a
> more powerful IDE but we received very little interest. As a result we
> transferred our efforts into a developing additional tools for our
> standard Ruby IDE and also creating a new Flex/ActionScript IDE for
> Visual Studio.

Any chance that might pick back up? I remember you mentioned that you
weren''t planning to keep it up with each release of IronRuby as it
developed, and I imagine that was a primary reason for the lack of interest.
Now that IR is closing in on 1.0, I would bet you would find more interest.

Regards,


Ryan Riley

Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/
Website: http://panesofglass.org/
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In my opinion, I think two things are necessary for IronRuby to gain more
momentum:

1. Allow static compilation of assemblies (.dll''s, .exe''s,
etc.) and allow
applications to be distributed in the standard Windows way. Good or bad,
Windows users expect precompiled binaries that can be run and installed.
This has been one of the biggest problems with standard CRuby - spotty
support for distribution on the Windows platform. Certainly there have been
attempts made at building .exe package makers, but they do not get enough
maintenance and every new version of Ruby tends to break them. It''s
extremely  cumbersome to have to install Ruby, wxRuby, and a myriad of other
libraries on every user''s machine (and make sure all the versions play
well
with each other!). Much easier to have one standard way of doing it. Also,
from what I understand, RubyGems has problems on Windows.

2. Full Visual Studio integration is necessary. I realize that intellisense
probably won''t work as well with dynamic languages, but even some basic
support would be a good thing. On top of that, you have other, even more
important tools like the Windows Forms/WPF designers, debugging tools,
database and web tools, etc. After developing GUI applications with
designers, it''s understandable that developers are not going to be
interested in going back to doing this through code alone (or through a
command line). Any productivity gains made by using Ruby will be offset by
the loss in productivity from the lack of tools.

I think Ruby is one of the most elegant and productive languages available
today, but the lack of tools is what''s preventing more widespread
adoption,
especially at the corporate/production environment level. All other things
being equal (Visual Studio integration), I think that IronRuby will win over
C# and VB in most cases and adoption will increase significantly. So
here''s
to hoping that the excellent progress already made will continue!

Just my humble opinion - thanks.
David



On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Ryan Riley <ryan.riley at
panesofglass.org>wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Huw Collingbourne <lists at
ruby-forum.com>wrote:
>
>> Re. Visual Studio integration. My company (SapphireSteel Software)
>> released an alpha Visual Studio IDE for IronRuby about 18 months ago
>> (Feb 2008): http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Ruby-In-Steel-For-IronRuby
>>
>> At that time, we offered to work with the IronRuby team to develop a
>> more powerful IDE but we received very little interest. As a result we
>> transferred our efforts into a developing additional tools for our
>> standard Ruby IDE and also creating a new Flex/ActionScript IDE for
>> Visual Studio.
>
>
> Any chance that might pick back up? I remember you mentioned that you
> weren''t planning to keep it up with each release of IronRuby as it
> developed, and I imagine that was a primary reason for the lack of
interest.
> Now that IR is closing in on 1.0, I would bet you would find more interest.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Ryan Riley
>
> Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
> Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/
> Website: http://panesofglass.org/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>
>
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Ryan Riley wrote:
> 
> Any chance that might pick back up? I remember you mentioned that you
> weren''t planning to keep it up with each release of IronRuby as it
> developed, and I imagine that was a primary reason for the lack of 
> interest.
Hello Ryan.

We are going to wait to see how much interest there will be from our 
customers. To date, I have to say, there hasn''t been much. To be 
perfectly honest, neither have we had much interest from the people here 
who are already using IronRuby. Bear in mind that we released the alpha 
IDE in Feb ''08, so there has been plenty of time for people to let us 
know whether or not Visual Studio integration of IronRuby is important 
to them. To date, very little feedback has been received.

Obviously we can''t commit a significant amount of our development time 
to a project that is generating so little interest. As I mentioned 
before, we have since moved onto the development of a Visual Studio IDE 
for Adobe Flex - that project has generated a great deal of interest and 
so we would need to be very convinced indeed that transferring 
development time back to IronRuby would be a sensible use of our 
resources.

I plan to ask our existing users for feedback on IronRuby shortly (I''ll
post some questions in our forum and blog). The response we get may help 
us to decide on our future plans. We''ll come to a final decision some 
time after the release of IR 1.0.

best wishes

Huw

http://www.sapphiresteel.com
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 4:48 AM, Huw Collingbourne <lists at
ruby-forum.com>wrote:
> Hello Ryan.
>
> We are going to wait to see how much interest there will be from our
> customers. To date, I have to say, there hasn''t been much. To be
> perfectly honest, neither have we had much interest from the people here
> who are already using IronRuby. Bear in mind that we released the alpha
> IDE in Feb ''08, so there has been plenty of time for people to let
us
> know whether or not Visual Studio integration of IronRuby is important
> to them. To date, very little feedback has been received.

Thanks, Huw. I can''t speak for everyone else and I may be recalling
this
incorrectly, but I haven''t pushed for anything b/c I thought it was
just a
matter of waiting. I never got the Ruby in Steel IDE b/c I''ve never
earned a
dime on any of my meager Ruby work and, with IronRuby on the horizon, I
wanted to get something that would work with IR. I imagine there are others
out there like me who just didn''t want to pester. :) However, I can
certainly understand the business implications, and I appreciate you posting
the question on your site. I''m hopeful you''ll get a good
response!

Best regards,

Ryan Riley

Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/
Website: http://panesofglass.org/
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Well we are getting some interesting comments on the post on our site so 
I don''t want to repeat myself too much in this thread ;-)

Suffice to say, while we have provided free IDEs for Ruby and IronRuby, 
we are a commercial company so we have to take a very hard-headed view 
of where our most profitable future path may be. For us to resume work 
on our Visual Studio IronRuby IDE, we really need to be convinced that 
there is a market for this among professional Visual Studio developers. 
While it is, I suppose, possible that people have been silently waiting 
for us to produce new versions of our IronRuby IDE, all I can say is 
that it has been our experience that when a body of programmers is using 
your IDE regularly, they don''t stay silent. When we were in the beta 
development of our standard Ruby IDE, we had a lot of user feedback. The 
same is now true of the IDE we are building for Adobe Flex.

The future of our IronRuby IDE is not something we are going to decide 
overnight. We''ll certainly keep a close eye on the IronRuby forums and 
we''ll no doubt carry on the discussion on our own forums and blog
before
we arrive at a final decision. Given the work we initially put into the 
alpha IronRuby IDE (the form designer etc.) it would be personally 
satisfying to take it up to the same level of development as our Ruby 
and Flex IDEs. At the moment, we are not completely convinced that 
diverting back resources into that would be a sound business decision. 
But if we do get the sense that there genuinely is an upwelling of 
interest among professional .NET / Visual Studio developers we shall, of 
course, pay very close attention to that! ;-)

best wishes

Huw

http://www.sapphiresteel.com
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Hey Shay,
> how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers
The deal is that you''re not convincing a Chevy SUV driver to switch to
a
Ford SUV. You''re asking him to switch to a Lamborghini sports car. The 
ride quality is different, the engine  is fundamentally different, the 
handling is different and though the risks to passersby are roughly the 
same (they get run over if the driver is careless), the risks to the 
driver are different (not much can happen to you in an SUV because, so 
to speak, your ass is covered).

What I''m trying to get at with this weak (but still amusing, I hope) 
analogy is that often with Ruby versus the mainstream (C#/Java), the 
fact that it''s IronRuby or JRuby matters little; it''s the
fundamentally
different approaches you need to take to ensure delivery that is the 
bigger issue. This includes technical issues like the unavailability of 
Intellisense (look at the bright side - the Java devs ask for 
refactoring support when you try to pitch JRuby to them which is a lot 
harder), software engineering issues (reliability, codebase entropy) and 
political issues (the last is a huge factor in the mainstream). My 
perspective - don''t bother about it, at least right now. You have an 
audience that has already accepted and dealt with these issues; 
basically, convert the existing C-Ruby community first. Converting all 
the Ferrari owners to Lamborghini is an easier proposition, and 
generates enough publicity that the more adventurous among the 
mainstream will start experimenting of their own accord.

As others on this thread have pointed out, most .Net shops are extremely 
conservative and most developers have next to no exposure to what the 
Ruby community would consider standard engineering best practices like 
TDD and CI. I''d say that the primary audience that you need to convert 
is the existing Ruby community by convincing them that IronRuby is a 
viable production platform. I''d say once the Ruby community accepts and
promotes IronRuby just as they already have JRuby, then you can worry 
about bringing the luddites on board.

At the risk of upsetting a lot of people, I think much of the mainstream 
.Net world is blinkered and has a very narrow perspective. For example, 
I have friends (and acquaintances) who are Microsoft devs who spend all 
their time writing C#, but who have never even _heard_ of Nant, NUnit 
and NHibernate. They have never heard of ReSharper and think 
VisualStudio is a cutting edge (*cough*) IDE. The Alt .Net guys are 
changing this, but these things take time.

Focus on converting the Ruby community and the edgier folks in the 
mainstream (who tend to have their ears to the ground anyways) will follow.

Best,
Sidu.
http://blog.sidu.in
http://twitter.com/ponnappa


Shay Friedman wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in 
> front of .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it 
> very very hard to pass that to existing .Net developers.
> I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster 
> (like POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#, 
> IR and Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
> Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get 
> out of their familiar development environment even when they see the 
> clear benefits of the new technology.
> They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them 
> - Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.
>
> That''s about what happens during a session:
> - No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to leave.
> - No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
> - Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.
>
> That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using 
> IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.
>
> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net 
> developers?
> and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net 
> devs will start using IronRuby?
>
> Thanks!
> Shay.
>
> -- 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Shay Friedman
> Author of IronRuby Unleashed
> http://www.IronShay.com
> Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>

But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on Windows a
pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s working
on Linux?
After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard time
imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to consider
IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe I''m
just
being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby developers to
leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby
to gain access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9,
somewhat steeper of a climb than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and
IronRuby, to the existing .NET community. I do agree that you have to go
in at the ALT.NET back door rather than the front door as the standard
enterprise .NET developer is likely to stare blankly at you while you
stammer in apparent gibberish at him, but converting Rubyists, this
early in the ball game? I say good luck to that :) My guess is the bar
of maturity and stability is even higher for existing Ruby programmers
than it is for fresh meat. But that''s just my half cocked opinion. :) 


-----Original Message-----
From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org
[mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of C. K. Ponnappa
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:28 PM
To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to
useIronRuby?

Hey Shay,
> how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers
The deal is that you''re not convincing a Chevy SUV driver to switch to
a

Ford SUV. You''re asking him to switch to a Lamborghini sports car. The 
ride quality is different, the engine  is fundamentally different, the 
handling is different and though the risks to passersby are roughly the 
same (they get run over if the driver is careless), the risks to the 
driver are different (not much can happen to you in an SUV because, so 
to speak, your ass is covered).

What I''m trying to get at with this weak (but still amusing, I hope) 
analogy is that often with Ruby versus the mainstream (C#/Java), the 
fact that it''s IronRuby or JRuby matters little; it''s the
fundamentally
different approaches you need to take to ensure delivery that is the 
bigger issue. This includes technical issues like the unavailability of 
Intellisense (look at the bright side - the Java devs ask for 
refactoring support when you try to pitch JRuby to them which is a lot 
harder), software engineering issues (reliability, codebase entropy) and

political issues (the last is a huge factor in the mainstream). My 
perspective - don''t bother about it, at least right now. You have an 
audience that has already accepted and dealt with these issues; 
basically, convert the existing C-Ruby community first. Converting all 
the Ferrari owners to Lamborghini is an easier proposition, and 
generates enough publicity that the more adventurous among the 
mainstream will start experimenting of their own accord.

As others on this thread have pointed out, most .Net shops are extremely

conservative and most developers have next to no exposure to what the 
Ruby community would consider standard engineering best practices like 
TDD and CI. I''d say that the primary audience that you need to convert 
is the existing Ruby community by convincing them that IronRuby is a 
viable production platform. I''d say once the Ruby community accepts and
promotes IronRuby just as they already have JRuby, then you can worry 
about bringing the luddites on board.

At the risk of upsetting a lot of people, I think much of the mainstream

.Net world is blinkered and has a very narrow perspective. For example, 
I have friends (and acquaintances) who are Microsoft devs who spend all 
their time writing C#, but who have never even _heard_ of Nant, NUnit 
and NHibernate. They have never heard of ReSharper and think 
VisualStudio is a cutting edge (*cough*) IDE. The Alt .Net guys are 
changing this, but these things take time.

Focus on converting the Ruby community and the edgier folks in the 
mainstream (who tend to have their ears to the ground anyways) will
follow.

Best,
Sidu.
http://blog.sidu.in
http://twitter.com/ponnappa


Shay Friedman wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in 
> front of .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it
> very very hard to pass that to existing .Net developers.
> I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster 
> (like POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#, 
> IR and Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
> Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get
> out of their familiar development environment even when they see the 
> clear benefits of the new technology.
> They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them
> - Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.
>
> That''s about what happens during a session:
> - No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to
leave.
> - No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
> - Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.
>
> That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using
> IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.
>
> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net 
> developers?
> and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net 
> devs will start using IronRuby?
>
> Thanks!
> Shay.
>
> -- 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Shay Friedman
> Author of IronRuby Unleashed
> http://www.IronShay.com
> Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>   
_______________________________________________
Ironruby-core mailing list
Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Nathan Stults
<Nathan_Stults at hsihealth.com>wrote:
> But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on
Windows a
> pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s
working on Linux?
> After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard
time
> imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
> shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to
consider
> IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe
I''m just
> being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby developers to
> leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby
> to gain access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9,
> somewhat steeper of a climb than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and
> IronRuby, to the existing .NET community.

What about RubyCocoa and Flex development? Not all Ruby is pure web or
console scripts. Apple got Ruby devs working on their platform (or maybe
vice versa). Why not Ruby WPF or Ruby Silverlight (via Ivan''s IronNails
or
Jimmy''s silverline)? It''s not a major jump, but it gives them
easier access
to Windows client development. If nothing else, they may be able to help
evangelize the C# and VB.NET stalwarts and show them a better way. ;)

Ryan Riley

Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/
Website: http://panesofglass.org/
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Good point. I guess from an evangelism perspective, it makes sense to talk to
everyone who walks by the soapbox, as there?s something for everyone. Even so,
if the path to significant adoption = IronRuby Evangelists =>  Rubyists 
=>  .NET Foot Soldiers, I?ll eat my hat J Fortunately, it?s made of food.

 

From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at
rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Riley
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:35 PM
To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers touseIronRuby?

 

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Nathan Stults <Nathan_Stults at
hsihealth.com> wrote:

But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on Windows a
pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s working
on Linux?
After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard time
imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to consider
IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe I''m
just
being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby developers to
leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby
to gain access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9,
somewhat steeper of a climb than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and
IronRuby, to the existing .NET community.

 

What about RubyCocoa and Flex development? Not all Ruby is pure web or console
scripts. Apple got Ruby devs working on their platform (or maybe vice versa).
Why not Ruby WPF or Ruby Silverlight (via Ivan''s IronNails or
Jimmy''s silverline)? It''s not a major jump, but it gives them
easier access to Windows client development. If nothing else, they may be able
to help evangelize the C# and VB.NET stalwarts and show them a better way. ;)


Ryan Riley

Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/

Website: http://panesofglass.org/ 

 

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Good point. I guess from an evangelism perspective, it makes sense to talk to
everyone who walks by the soapbox, as there?s something for everyone. Even so,
if the path to significant adoption = IronRuby Evangelists =>  Rubyists 
=>  .NET Foot Soldiers, I?ll eat my hat. Fortunately, it?s made of food.

 

 

From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at
rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Riley
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:35 PM
To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers touseIronRuby?

 

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Nathan Stults <Nathan_Stults at
hsihealth.com> wrote:

But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on Windows a
pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s working
on Linux?
After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard time
imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to consider
IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe I''m
just
being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby developers to
leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby
to gain access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9,
somewhat steeper of a climb than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and
IronRuby, to the existing .NET community.

 

What about RubyCocoa and Flex development? Not all Ruby is pure web or console
scripts. Apple got Ruby devs working on their platform (or maybe vice versa).
Why not Ruby WPF or Ruby Silverlight (via Ivan''s IronNails or
Jimmy''s silverline)? It''s not a major jump, but it gives them
easier access to Windows client development. If nothing else, they may be able
to help evangelize the C# and VB.NET stalwarts and show them a better way. ;)


Ryan Riley

Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/

Website: http://panesofglass.org/ 

 

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On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 12:08 AM, Nathan Stults
<Nathan_Stults at hsihealth.com>wrote:
>  Good point. I guess from an evangelism perspective, it makes sense to
> talk to everyone who walks by the soapbox, as there?s something for
> everyone. Even so, if the path to significant adoption = IronRuby
> Evangelists =>  Rubyists  =>  .NET Foot Soldiers, I?ll eat my hat
JFortunately, it?s made of food.
>
>
> Well, since I''m taking that approach atm, here''s to good
health and tasty
hats! ;)


Ryan Riley

Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/
Website: http://panesofglass.org/
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On a related vein, I got some news from the Rails core team a couple of days ago
that the Rails documentation is viewed by Windows machines 50% of the time. The
Rails core team sees Windows developers as a huge group of people to make happy.
>>> Ruby is considerably faster on Linux
Unfortunately, that was true with previous builds of Ruby, but the new revived
RubyInstaller project is building Ruby with more modern compilers, getting the
speed up to what Ruby on Linux is: See
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/10/how-much-faster-is-ruby-on-linux/ and
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/04/a-faster-ruby-on-windows-is-possible/ if
you haven''t already.

~js

-----Original Message-----
From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at
rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Stults
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:44 PM
To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to useIronRuby?

But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on Windows a
pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s working
on Linux?
After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard time
imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to consider
IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe I''m
just being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby developers to
leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby to gain
access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9, somewhat steeper
of a climb than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and IronRuby, to the existing
.NET community. I do agree that you have to go in at the ALT.NET back door
rather than the front door as the standard enterprise .NET developer is likely
to stare blankly at you while you stammer in apparent gibberish at him, but
converting Rubyists, this early in the ball game? I say good luck to that :) My
guess is the bar of maturity and stability is even higher for existing Ruby
programmers than it is for fresh meat. But that''s just my half cocked
opinion. :)


-----Original Message-----
From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org
[mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of C. K. Ponnappa
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:28 PM
To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to useIronRuby?

Hey Shay,
> how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers
The deal is that you''re not convincing a Chevy SUV driver to switch to
a

Ford SUV. You''re asking him to switch to a Lamborghini sports car. The
ride quality is different, the engine  is fundamentally different, the handling
is different and though the risks to passersby are roughly the same (they get
run over if the driver is careless), the risks to the driver are different (not
much can happen to you in an SUV because, so to speak, your ass is covered).

What I''m trying to get at with this weak (but still amusing, I hope)
analogy is that often with Ruby versus the mainstream (C#/Java), the fact that
it''s IronRuby or JRuby matters little; it''s the fundamentally
different approaches you need to take to ensure delivery that is the bigger
issue. This includes technical issues like the unavailability of Intellisense
(look at the bright side - the Java devs ask for refactoring support when you
try to pitch JRuby to them which is a lot harder), software engineering issues
(reliability, codebase entropy) and

political issues (the last is a huge factor in the mainstream). My perspective -
don''t bother about it, at least right now. You have an audience that
has already accepted and dealt with these issues; basically, convert the
existing C-Ruby community first. Converting all the Ferrari owners to
Lamborghini is an easier proposition, and generates enough publicity that the
more adventurous among the mainstream will start experimenting of their own
accord.

As others on this thread have pointed out, most .Net shops are extremely

conservative and most developers have next to no exposure to what the Ruby
community would consider standard engineering best practices like TDD and CI.
I''d say that the primary audience that you need to convert is the
existing Ruby community by convincing them that IronRuby is a viable production
platform. I''d say once the Ruby community accepts and promotes IronRuby
just as they already have JRuby, then you can worry about bringing the luddites
on board.

At the risk of upsetting a lot of people, I think much of the mainstream

.Net world is blinkered and has a very narrow perspective. For example, I have
friends (and acquaintances) who are Microsoft devs who spend all their time
writing C#, but who have never even _heard_ of Nant, NUnit and NHibernate. They
have never heard of ReSharper and think VisualStudio is a cutting edge (*cough*)
IDE. The Alt .Net guys are changing this, but these things take time.

Focus on converting the Ruby community and the edgier folks in the mainstream
(who tend to have their ears to the ground anyways) will follow.

Best,
Sidu.
http://blog.sidu.in
http://twitter.com/ponnappa


Shay Friedman wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in 
> front of .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it
> very very hard to pass that to existing .Net developers.
> I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster 
> (like POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#, 
> IR and Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
> Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get
> out of their familiar development environment even when they see the 
> clear benefits of the new technology.
> They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them
> - Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.
>
> That''s about what happens during a session:
> - No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to
leave.
> - No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
> - Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.
>
> That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using
> IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.
>
> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net 
> developers?
> and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net 
> devs will start using IronRuby?
>
> Thanks!
> Shay.
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------
> Shay Friedman
> Author of IronRuby Unleashed
> http://www.IronShay.com
> Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>   
_______________________________________________
Ironruby-core mailing list
Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
_______________________________________________
Ironruby-core mailing list
Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core

dont forget that since rails devs are always looking for ways to squeeze
some more performance from their poorly performing c-ruby, if ironruby
performs considerably faster than MRI and JRuby, some dedicated windows
rails servers will start to pop up. it will be easier in every possible way
for a .net dev to deploy, run and manage.

i think this is the major ''selling'' point -- bigger share for
windows
servers and bigger opportunities for .net developers at the end of the day.

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Jimmy Schementi <
Jimmy.Schementi at microsoft.com> wrote:
> On a related vein, I got some news from the Rails core team a couple of
> days ago that the Rails documentation is viewed by Windows machines 50% of
> the time. The Rails core team sees Windows developers as a huge group of
> people to make happy.
>
> >>> Ruby is considerably faster on Linux
>
> Unfortunately, that was true with previous builds of Ruby, but the new
> revived RubyInstaller project is building Ruby with more modern compilers,
> getting the speed up to what Ruby on Linux is: See
> http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/10/how-much-faster-is-ruby-on-linux/and
>
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/04/a-faster-ruby-on-windows-is-possible/if
you haven''t already.
>
> ~js
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org [mailto:
> ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Stults
> Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:44 PM
> To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to
> useIronRuby?
>
> But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on
Windows a
> pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s
working on Linux?
> After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard
time
> imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
shouldn''t
> really need to convert, but simply be willing to consider IronRuby as an
> alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe I''m just being
pessimistic,
> but I see convincing established Ruby developers to leave their stable,
> mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby to gain access to .NET,
> and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9, somewhat steeper of a climb
> than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and IronRuby, to the existing .NET
> community. I do agree that you have to go in at the ALT.NET back door
> rather than the front door as the standard enterprise .NET developer is
> likely to stare blankly at you while you stammer in apparent gibberish at
> him, but converting Rubyists, this early in the ball game? I say good luck
> to that :) My guess is the bar of maturity and stability is even higher for
> existing Ruby programmers than
>  it is for fresh meat. But that''s just my half cocked opinion. :)
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org
> [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of C. K. Ponnappa
> Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:28 PM
> To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to
> useIronRuby?
>
> Hey Shay,
>
> > how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers
> The deal is that you''re not convincing a Chevy SUV driver to
switch to a
>
> Ford SUV. You''re asking him to switch to a Lamborghini sports car.
The ride
> quality is different, the engine  is fundamentally different, the handling
> is different and though the risks to passersby are roughly the same (they
> get run over if the driver is careless), the risks to the driver are
> different (not much can happen to you in an SUV because, so to speak, your
> ass is covered).
>
> What I''m trying to get at with this weak (but still amusing, I
hope)
> analogy is that often with Ruby versus the mainstream (C#/Java), the fact
> that it''s IronRuby or JRuby matters little; it''s the
fundamentally different
> approaches you need to take to ensure delivery that is the bigger issue.
> This includes technical issues like the unavailability of Intellisense
(look
> at the bright side - the Java devs ask for refactoring support when you try
> to pitch JRuby to them which is a lot harder), software engineering issues
> (reliability, codebase entropy) and
>
> political issues (the last is a huge factor in the mainstream). My
> perspective - don''t bother about it, at least right now. You have
an
> audience that has already accepted and dealt with these issues; basically,
> convert the existing C-Ruby community first. Converting all the Ferrari
> owners to Lamborghini is an easier proposition, and generates enough
> publicity that the more adventurous among the mainstream will start
> experimenting of their own accord.
>
> As others on this thread have pointed out, most .Net shops are extremely
>
> conservative and most developers have next to no exposure to what the Ruby
> community would consider standard engineering best practices like TDD and
> CI. I''d say that the primary audience that you need to convert is
the
> existing Ruby community by convincing them that IronRuby is a viable
> production platform. I''d say once the Ruby community accepts and
promotes
> IronRuby just as they already have JRuby, then you can worry about bringing
> the luddites on board.
>
> At the risk of upsetting a lot of people, I think much of the mainstream
>
> .Net world is blinkered and has a very narrow perspective. For example, I
> have friends (and acquaintances) who are Microsoft devs who spend all their
> time writing C#, but who have never even _heard_ of Nant, NUnit and
> NHibernate. They have never heard of ReSharper and think VisualStudio is a
> cutting edge (*cough*) IDE. The Alt .Net guys are changing this, but these
> things take time.
>
> Focus on converting the Ruby community and the edgier folks in the
> mainstream (who tend to have their ears to the ground anyways) will follow.
>
> Best,
> Sidu.
> http://blog.sidu.in
> http://twitter.com/ponnappa
>
>
> Shay Friedman wrote:
> > Hi there,
> >
> > In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in
> > front of .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I find it
>
> > very very hard to pass that to existing .Net developers.
> > I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster
> > (like POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from C#,
> > IR and Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...
> > Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to get
>
> > out of their familiar development environment even when they see the
> > clear benefits of the new technology.
> > They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from them
>
> > - Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.
> >
> > That''s about what happens during a session:
> > - No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to
> leave.
> > - No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.
> > - Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.
> >
> > That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of using
>
> > IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.
> >
> > My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net
> > developers?
> > and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net
> > devs will start using IronRuby?
> >
> > Thanks!
> > Shay.
> >
> > --
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > Shay Friedman
> > Author of IronRuby Unleashed
> > http://www.IronShay.com
> > Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ironruby-core mailing list
> > Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>
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> But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on
Windows a
> pretty small group, all in all?
This is true. But mostly because none of them actually work for Windows 
shops, because if a shop is open to C-Ruby or J-Ruby they are not a 
Windows shop. Almost a Catch 22.
> After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux.
This is true too - but only compared to Ruby on Windows. The MRI 
compared to anything else (any other language) is like treacle. In fact, 
I always strongly recommend JRuby to all my clients, and one of our 
flagship products (Mingle) has been on JRuby since JRuby 0.9.  Pretty 
much the only thing I miss on JRuby in terms of libraries is RCov - 
everything else has been ported, or better options exist in Java 
already. Of course, the fact that JRuby is *way* faster than MRI helps, 
and from everything I''ve seen IronRuby is going to be just as quick, if
not quicker.

Now, most shops are either Java or .Net and honestly, at the end of the 
day, this is with reference to the supported production environment, 
really, not the languages used. Taking myself as an example, I believe 
Ruby is a good idea so solve certain problems, and I can (and do) make a 
strong case for Ruby in Java shops thanks to JRuby. With IronRuby 
becoming mainstream, I can now start to make a case for it, and this is 
what I''m trying to get at. It will be dedicated Rubyists that make the 
point that a Windows production environment and a Ruby project are no 
longer a contradiction in terms, not unconvinced VB.Net devs or a suit 
that showed up at a MS dev day by mistake. It''s the early adopters that
evangelise, and someone who has only ever done C# since 2002 because his 
employers asked him to clearly isn''t an early adopter.

And finally, the most crucial point for me:  The .Net world doesn''t 
contain the most avid open source contributors (or even users) in the 
world. Not by a long shot. The Java world does, and the Ruby world is 
nothing but avid open source contributors and users. This is why you see 
JRuby grow a viable ecosystem in no time at all, with all significant 
gems ported and production deployments even before a 1.0. Without that, 
you simply do not have enough tools and libraries to build stuff. 
Encouraging developers and maintainers of popular Ruby gems to support 
and innovate on IronRuby is of the utmost importance. And almost every 
single popular gem is developed on either OSX or Linux - which means 
IronRuby building and running smoothly on both Linux and OSX is 
essential to get the ecosystem going.

Anyways, long story short, when we get to a point where a hacker can 
confidently offer to solve a problem with a Ruby app (especially in the 
enterprise, because here there be dragons) even though its a Windows 
shop, we''ve achieved critical mass. Then its all downhill from there.

Best,
Sidu.
http://blog.sidu.in
http://twitter.com/ponnappa

Nathan Stults wrote:
>
> Good point. I guess from an evangelism perspective, it makes sense to 
> talk to everyone who walks by the soapbox, as there?s something for 
> everyone. Even so, if the path to significant adoption = IronRuby 
> Evangelists =>  Rubyists  =>  .NET Foot Soldiers, I?ll eat my hat. 
> Fortunately, it?s made of food.
>
>  
>
>  
>
> *From:* ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org 
> [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] *On Behalf Of *Ryan Riley
> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:35 PM
> *To:* ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers 
> touseIronRuby?
>
>  
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Nathan Stults 
> <Nathan_Stults at hsihealth.com <mailto:Nathan_Stults at
hsihealth.com>> wrote:
>
> But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on
Windows a
> pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s
working on Linux?
> After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard
time
> imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
> shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to
consider
> IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe
I''m just
> being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby developers to
> leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby
> to gain access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9,
> somewhat steeper of a climb than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and
> IronRuby, to the existing .NET community.
>
>  
>
> What about RubyCocoa and Flex development? Not all Ruby is pure web or 
> console scripts. Apple got Ruby devs working on their platform (or 
> maybe vice versa). Why not Ruby WPF or Ruby Silverlight (via
Ivan''s
> IronNails or Jimmy''s silverline)? It''s not a major jump,
but it gives
> them easier access to Windows client development. If nothing else, 
> they may be able to help evangelize the C# and VB.NET <http://VB.NET>
> stalwarts and show them a better way. ;)
>
>
> Ryan Riley
>
> Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org <mailto:ryan.riley at
panesofglass.org>
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
> Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/
>
> Website: http://panesofglass.org/ 
>
>  
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>

2009/11/5 C. K. Ponnappa <ckponnappa at
gmail.com>:
> And finally, the most crucial point for me: ?The .Net world
doesn''t contain
> the most avid open source contributors (or even users) in the world. Not by
> a long shot. The Java world does, and the Ruby world is nothing but avid
> open source contributors and users. This is why you see JRuby grow a viable
> ecosystem in no time at all, with all significant gems ported and
production
> deployments even before a 1.0. Without that, you simply do not have enough
> tools and libraries to build stuff. Encouraging developers and maintainers
> of popular Ruby gems to support and innovate on IronRuby is of the utmost
> importance. And almost every single popular gem is developed on either OSX
> or Linux - which means IronRuby building and running smoothly on both Linux
> and OSX is essential to get the ecosystem going.
I agree 100%. This is why I spent a lot of time running IronPython on Mono
in 2006 and 2007, and I believe this is of critical importance for IronRuby too,
but this doesn''t seem to be too popular here...

-- 
Seo Sanghyeon

You''re probably right, you have a much broader perspective than I do
(Windows/MS only) and on the larger scale, I can see how acceptance of IronRuby
as a first class Ruby platform by the Ruby community will make or break its
ultimate success. And I see what you mean about the nature of the OSS
communities of the various platforms. Actually, my biggest fear for IronRuby is
that the community won''t port enough of the native components of the
Ruby libraries to make it a truly viable option, exactly because the .NET OSS
community isn''t as robust, so engaging Ruby developers to step in and
help get the work done does seem absolutely critical, in retrospect far more
critical than convincing existing .NET developers to slowly start dipping their
toes in IronRuby, as progress in that direction is not likely to move the
platform towards parity with the other Ruby interpreters, which is the key
component. Thanks for the schooling.

-----Original Message-----
From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at
rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of C. K. Ponnappa
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 1:56 AM
To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Netdevelopers touseIronRuby?
> But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on
Windows a
> pretty small group, all in all?
This is true. But mostly because none of them actually work for Windows 
shops, because if a shop is open to C-Ruby or J-Ruby they are not a 
Windows shop. Almost a Catch 22.
> After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux.
This is true too - but only compared to Ruby on Windows. The MRI 
compared to anything else (any other language) is like treacle. In fact, 
I always strongly recommend JRuby to all my clients, and one of our 
flagship products (Mingle) has been on JRuby since JRuby 0.9.  Pretty 
much the only thing I miss on JRuby in terms of libraries is RCov - 
everything else has been ported, or better options exist in Java 
already. Of course, the fact that JRuby is *way* faster than MRI helps, 
and from everything I''ve seen IronRuby is going to be just as quick, if
not quicker.

Now, most shops are either Java or .Net and honestly, at the end of the 
day, this is with reference to the supported production environment, 
really, not the languages used. Taking myself as an example, I believe 
Ruby is a good idea so solve certain problems, and I can (and do) make a 
strong case for Ruby in Java shops thanks to JRuby. With IronRuby 
becoming mainstream, I can now start to make a case for it, and this is 
what I''m trying to get at. It will be dedicated Rubyists that make the 
point that a Windows production environment and a Ruby project are no 
longer a contradiction in terms, not unconvinced VB.Net devs or a suit 
that showed up at a MS dev day by mistake. It''s the early adopters that
evangelise, and someone who has only ever done C# since 2002 because his 
employers asked him to clearly isn''t an early adopter.

And finally, the most crucial point for me:  The .Net world doesn''t 
contain the most avid open source contributors (or even users) in the 
world. Not by a long shot. The Java world does, and the Ruby world is 
nothing but avid open source contributors and users. This is why you see 
JRuby grow a viable ecosystem in no time at all, with all significant 
gems ported and production deployments even before a 1.0. Without that, 
you simply do not have enough tools and libraries to build stuff. 
Encouraging developers and maintainers of popular Ruby gems to support 
and innovate on IronRuby is of the utmost importance. And almost every 
single popular gem is developed on either OSX or Linux - which means 
IronRuby building and running smoothly on both Linux and OSX is 
essential to get the ecosystem going.

Anyways, long story short, when we get to a point where a hacker can 
confidently offer to solve a problem with a Ruby app (especially in the 
enterprise, because here there be dragons) even though its a Windows 
shop, we''ve achieved critical mass. Then its all downhill from there.

Best,
Sidu.
http://blog.sidu.in
http://twitter.com/ponnappa

Nathan Stults wrote:
>
> Good point. I guess from an evangelism perspective, it makes sense to 
> talk to everyone who walks by the soapbox, as there?s something for 
> everyone. Even so, if the path to significant adoption = IronRuby 
> Evangelists =>  Rubyists  =>  .NET Foot Soldiers, I?ll eat my hat. 
> Fortunately, it?s made of food.
>
>  
>
>  
>
> *From:* ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org 
> [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] *On Behalf Of *Ryan Riley
> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:35 PM
> *To:* ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers 
> touseIronRuby?
>
>  
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Nathan Stults 
> <Nathan_Stults at hsihealth.com <mailto:Nathan_Stults at
hsihealth.com>> wrote:
>
> But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on
Windows a
> pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s
working on Linux?
> After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard
time
> imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
> shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to
consider
> IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe
I''m just
> being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby developers to
> leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for 0.x IronRuby
> to gain access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye to Ruby 1.9,
> somewhat steeper of a climb than peddling dynamic languages, Ruby and
> IronRuby, to the existing .NET community.
>
>  
>
> What about RubyCocoa and Flex development? Not all Ruby is pure web or 
> console scripts. Apple got Ruby devs working on their platform (or 
> maybe vice versa). Why not Ruby WPF or Ruby Silverlight (via
Ivan''s
> IronNails or Jimmy''s silverline)? It''s not a major jump,
but it gives
> them easier access to Windows client development. If nothing else, 
> they may be able to help evangelize the C# and VB.NET <http://VB.NET>
> stalwarts and show them a better way. ;)
>
>
> Ryan Riley
>
> Email: ryan.riley at panesofglass.org <mailto:ryan.riley at
panesofglass.org>
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley
> Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/
>
> Website: http://panesofglass.org/ 
>
>  
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ironruby-core mailing list
> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>   
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So think about the possibilities of eventually running IronRuby web
apps and services on the Azure platform ...

This would be very compelling to .NET developers.

[... dreaming ... ]

Dotan N. wrote:

  dont forget that since rails devs are always looking
for ways to squeeze some more performance from their poorly performing
c-ruby, if ironruby performs considerably faster than MRI and JRuby,
some dedicated windows rails servers will start to pop up. it will be
easier in every possible way for a .net dev to deploy, run and manage. 

i think this is the major ''selling'' point -- bigger share for
windows
servers and bigger opportunities for .net developers at the end of the
day.

  On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Jimmy
Schementi
<Jimmy.Schementi-0li6OtcxBFHby3iVrkZq2A@public.gmane.org>
wrote:

  On
a related vein, I got some news from the Rails core team a couple of
days ago that the Rails documentation is viewed by Windows machines 50%
of the time. The Rails core team sees Windows developers as a huge
group of people to make happy.

>>> Ruby is considerably faster on Linux

Unfortunately, that was true with previous builds of Ruby, but the new
revived RubyInstaller project is building Ruby with more modern
compilers, getting the speed up to what Ruby on Linux is: See
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/10/how-much-faster-is-ruby-on-linux/
and http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/04/a-faster-ruby-on-windows-is-possible/
if you haven''t already.

~js

-----Original Message-----

From: ironruby-core-bounces-GrnCvJ7WPxnNLxjTenLetw@public.gmane.org
[mailto:ironruby-core-bounces-GrnCvJ7WPxnNLxjTenLetw@public.gmane.org]
On Behalf Of Nathan Stults

Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:44 PM

To: ironruby-core-GrnCvJ7WPxnNLxjTenLetw@public.gmane.org

Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to
useIronRuby?

But isn''t the C-Ruby or J-Ruby crowd deploying primarily on Windows a
pretty small group, all in all? Aren''t most Ruby dev''s working
on Linux?

After all, Ruby is considerably faster on Linux. I''m having a hard time
imagining what the value proposition is for this demographic, who
shouldn''t really need to convert, but simply be willing to consider
IronRuby as an alternative deployment option for Windows. Maybe I''m
just being pessimistic, but I see convincing established Ruby
developers to leave their stable, mature interpreters and libraries for
0.x IronRuby to gain access to .NET, and at the same time wave goodbye
to Ruby 1.9, somewhat steeper of a climb than peddling dynamic
languages, Ruby and IronRuby, to the existing .NET community. I do
agree that you have to go in at the ALT.NET back door rather
than the front door as the standard enterprise .NET developer is likely
to stare blankly at you while you stammer in apparent gibberish at him,
but converting Rubyists, this early in the ball game? I say good luck
to that :) My guess is the bar of maturity and stability is even higher
for existing Ruby programmers than

 it is for fresh meat. But that''s just my half cocked opinion. :)

-----Original Message-----

From: ironruby-core-bounces-GrnCvJ7WPxnNLxjTenLetw@public.gmane.org

[mailto:ironruby-core-bounces-GrnCvJ7WPxnNLxjTenLetw@public.gmane.org]
On Behalf Of C. K. Ponnappa

Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:28 PM

To: ironruby-core-GrnCvJ7WPxnNLxjTenLetw@public.gmane.org

Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] How do you convince .Net developers to
useIronRuby?

Hey Shay,

> how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net developers

The deal is that you''re not convincing a Chevy SUV driver to switch to
a

Ford SUV. You''re asking him to switch to a Lamborghini sports car. The
ride quality is different, the engine  is fundamentally different, the
handling is different and though the risks to passersby are roughly the
same (they get run over if the driver is careless), the risks to the
driver are different (not much can happen to you in an SUV because, so
to speak, your ass is covered).

What I''m trying to get at with this weak (but still amusing, I hope)
analogy is that often with Ruby versus the mainstream (C#/Java), the
fact that it''s IronRuby or JRuby matters little; it''s the
fundamentally
different approaches you need to take to ensure delivery that is the
bigger issue. This includes technical issues like the unavailability of
Intellisense (look at the bright side - the Java devs ask for
refactoring support when you try to pitch JRuby to them which is a lot
harder), software engineering issues (reliability, codebase entropy) and

political issues (the last is a huge factor in the mainstream). My
perspective - don''t bother about it, at least right now. You have an
audience that has already accepted and dealt with these issues;
basically, convert the existing C-Ruby community first. Converting all
the Ferrari owners to Lamborghini is an easier proposition, and
generates enough publicity that the more adventurous among the
mainstream will start experimenting of their own accord.

As others on this thread have pointed out, most .Net shops are extremely

conservative and most developers have next to no exposure to what the
Ruby community would consider standard engineering best practices like
TDD and CI. I''d say that the primary audience that you need to convert
is the existing Ruby community by convincing them that IronRuby is a
viable production platform. I''d say once the Ruby community accepts and
promotes IronRuby just as they already have JRuby, then you can worry
about bringing the luddites on board.

At the risk of upsetting a lot of people, I think much of the mainstream

.Net world is blinkered and has a very narrow perspective. For example,
I have friends (and acquaintances) who are Microsoft devs who spend all
their time writing C#, but who have never even _heard_ of Nant, NUnit
and NHibernate. They have never heard of ReSharper and think
VisualStudio is a cutting edge (*cough*) IDE. The Alt .Net guys are
changing this, but these things take time.

Focus on converting the Ruby community and the edgier folks in the
mainstream (who tend to have their ears to the ground anyways) will
follow.

Best,

Sidu.

    http://blog.sidu.in

    http://twitter.com/ponnappa

Shay Friedman wrote:

> Hi there,

>

> In the last month I had 3 sessions about IronRuby, all of them in

> front of .Net audience. I really believe in the IronRuby but I
find it

> very very hard to pass that to existing .Net developers.

> I try to show the benefits of using IR - getting things done faster

> (like POCs, internal tools), using REPL, using IR abilities from
C#,

> IR and Silverlight (like Gestalt), unit testing, RoR...

> Most of the .Net devs are very conservative and are not willing to
get

> out of their familiar development environment even when they see
the

> clear benefits of the new technology.

> They feel that using IronRuby will take everything they love from
them

> - Visual Studio, Ctrl+F5, the sacred intellisense, etc.

>

> That''s about what happens during a session:

> - No Visual Studio integration: 50% of the audience are willing to

leave.

> - No compilation: more 25% have just lost interest.

> - Intensive command line work: more 15% are shutting down.

>

> That leaves about 10 perecent of the audience that just think of
using

> IronRuby, most of them decide not to eventually.

>

> My question is - how do you suggest to present IronRuby to .Net

> developers?

> and to the team members - does Microsoft expect that existing .Net

> devs will start using IronRuby?

>

> Thanks!

> Shay.

>

> --

> --------------------------------------------------

> Shay Friedman

> Author of IronRuby Unleashed

> http://www.IronShay.com

> Follow me: http://twitter.com/ironshay

>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

>

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>

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