Hey Michael, Two things.
1. I tend to agree with you about software engineers. They haven't cut their teeth by trying to do things the hard way in much more difficult languages - they don't fully appreciate the amount of time Ruby saves you when writing software, because frameworks like Merb and Rails, and for that matter even WebObjects and Java frameworks and others do so much for you. They make it so much easier. There's so much you DON'T have to think about. However, this is no excuse to be entirely ignorant of these issues. Frameworks exist mostly for experienced programmers, not new ones... they exist because truly good programmers are defined by what they DON'T write more than what they DO write. They spend less time writing code because they re-use code that they already have. The sum of the code for the web applications I've written act as a library of code that I personally can draw on to build new web applications. I have existing elegant solutions to common problems, so I re-use them. Frameworks are a reflection of this, and therefore should be used by programmers only when they have an awesome grasp of what the framework does - or at least a rudimentary one! 2. Having said all that, people have to start somewhere. I've long wondered why things can't be simultaneously easy, simple and instructive, AND powerful, customizable and concise. There is definitely a huge hole when it comes to the education of programmers, and not least this is because the more experienced a programmer becomes, the less "in touch" with the beginner's mind they are. It's the same in any field. It takes a very very very special sort of person to be able to simultaneously be young in the mind and draw on one's experience to abstract understanding and apply it, with energy. And another layer of special on top of that to be able to share the experience and understanding with another (mostly because one must understand oneself first). There is a definite tendency towards knee-jerk reactions of pointing blame. An open source framework is not a product you buy off the shelf and then act like a user and expect customer support. Joining this (and especially the larger Ruby) community, an attitude of gratitude at being given help ought to be fostered. It was not always this easy, and it was not always this powerful. We must not lose sight of history. Using Merb, one is part of a web application history that goes back many years, and sits on generations of technology. New people need at least a sense of this, and older people need to be mindful of this to bring respect into the equation. Sometimes I am sitting, coding, and I'm entirely filled with what a wonderful thing it is to be able to sit and type this wonderful code, in this wonderful language, and have my meanings be expressed as they are. Of course, usually after about 5 minutes of this, I get distracted by the problem again, but at least these days the moments of joy are far more frequent :-) I do think that we've only just scratched the surface, though. This language is wonderful, but there are far more expressive ways we could convey our meanings for modelling our imagined logic. Julian. On 26/10/2008, at 4:31 PM, Michael Klishin wrote: > > 2008/10/26 maxbaroi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> >> I installed mongrel and everything worked out fine. I can see the >> merb >> page on port 4000. I guess gem 1.2.0 didn't install mongrel when I >> installed merb > > Since most of exception you got here are from rubygems, I think we > should > catch them in dependency loading code and output something more > friendly. > > Every time someone has the same problem, I personally bitch at "damn > helpless software engineers of the 21 century, who call themselves > 'Ruby rockstars' > but hardly can even read an exception trace and never read the source > code of essential Ruby software like RubyGems". > But I cannot be sure that you have any technical background at all > so... :) > > If you have any ideas on what error messages you'd like to see (say > "Hey, Merb cannot load gem so and so, do the following to install it. > For the list of common gotchas with some common gems see wiki page at > ..."), > just leave a reply in this thread. > > Again, I'd like to stress that Merb pushes RubyGems to it's limit even > when it comes to error messages. > But it only should help us make RubyGems better for everyone in the > future. So it's not a Dependency Hell (does it sound like a movie > title to you too?) > but a Growth Period instead. > -- > MK > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "merb" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/merb?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
