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How to not get the point in many steps

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James Robertson

Posts: 29924
Nickname: jarober61
Registered: Jun, 2003

David Buck, Smalltalker at large
How to not get the point in many steps Posted: Mar 19, 2006 4:57 PM
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This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson.
Original Post: How to not get the point in many steps
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml
Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
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It's fairly easy to not get the point when you wish away most of the problems. Step one: wave your hands at contrary evidence as a way to get large amounts of contrary evidence out of site:

The focus of this blog is on Ruby and not on other dynamic languages. For those, they will get their own blog entries. Ruby, to me feels like a trainwreck waiting to happen. So lets list out reasons why Ruby currently makes zero sense for developing enterprise applications

Translated: "Ignore all that Perl, Python, Smalltalk, and Lisp out there. When I said "dynamic, I meant Ruby!". Uh huh. Having done some hand waving to dismiss the decent sized amount of contrary evidence, let's move to step two: without citing any evidence, call all the available book (on Ruby only, naturally) bad:

While there are lots of books on Ruby, none of them are good. Most are mediocre and deal with the simplistic aspects of writing software. The publishing community tends to focus on introductory titles and eschew books that are for folks who already know how to program, which constrains one's ability to do anything complex. Of course the agile community, doesn't count learning on the job as part of the cost of a project

The straw man is taking shape now: "No one uses dynamic languages, err, I mean, Ruby, and besides, the books all stink". On to step three: invoke analysts and large consulting firms as the authorities, and use the time honored tactic of assertion from authority:

Much of the guidance that the enterprises receive come from either big consulting firms such as Accenture, DiamondCluster, Wipro, Bearingpoint and others. If it isn't on their radar then it probably won't reach critical mass. Likewise, the other perspective comes from industry analysts who usually make irresponsible recommendations and oversummarizations of most problem spaces. In this particular scenario, industry analysts aren't even wasting their own time talking much about Ruby.

Yeah, the delivery track record of large consulting firms is so good. These are the outfits that wave five experts at you, and then - once the ink is dry - bury you in an army of untrained new hires. Let's bring in those crowd following analyst firms while we're at it, too - they always do a great job of following the money... err, the trends. Or something.

I could go on, but the post only gets more incoherent from there. What I'd like to know is this: why is this guy so threatened by dynamic languages in general, and Ruby in particular? You might almost get the idea that he's heavily invested in the status quo, and doesn't want to see things change. The tip off there is a few paragraphs down from where I got tired of abusing the article, when he brings up "enterprise architects".

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