I can sympathise with Kevin and find his experience similar to my own. Whether his recommendations make any sense ... I'm not so sure ...
I've been involved in programming and computers for way too long, but in an intermittent manner, with gaps of years doing something totally different followed by bouts of programming, each time in a different environment and with different languages. Having seen technologies come and go, I do not feel optimistic regarding the survivability of RoR. During the '80s I was involved (in a very tiny way) with research into the theoretical underpinning of Ronald Reagans "Star Wars", the question being whether a given piece of code could be mathematically proven to be fail-save. The conclusion seemed to be a resounding "no". This was frustrating, perhaps one tended to view programming languages as being "mathematical languages" and felt that if properly written, code should follow some sort of mathematical laws. The impression I get with RoR is that it is much closer to being an "organic language", where you can learn to speak it and become proficient but not without a significant effort. Being young is obviously a huge asset when learning languages and I suspect this to be the case here as well (as opposed to learning standard programming languages - I find Ruby easy to learn, much easier than I found learning Pascal was 30 years ago). RoR, as opposed to Ruby, is perhaps best seen as a step towards the development of truly intelligent programming languages, where the machine moves towards an understanding of human thought - not the other way round. RoR is obviously a very temporary phenomenon and it will eventually be replaced by something totally different. It seems to have a very narrow application window which, combined with the effort of learning to "speak" RoR, sets it on the path to its own eventual demise. I'd estimate something in the region of 5 years, definitely not as much as 10. So the question is really: Is documentation worth the effort? And the answer is probably: No. Attempting to do what Kevin suggests would probably kill RoR off much faster than it's "natural" lifespan would otherwise be. Personally I am not willing to invest the time and effort needed to become proficient in something that, to me, seems a very temporary and fast-changing phenomenon. But I can see younger programmers benefiting hugely from their efforts in RoR, not least from being involved in development. RoR points to a future where programming will be quicker and easier, but also with a higher tolerance of individual instances of code failures. A more organic way of programming, one that moves closer to what our brains are built for - communicating, conceptualising - and away from what computers are good at - calculating and shuffling of minutiae. Hoping to have complete documentation of future programming environments will be as futile as an American hoping to learn Japanese by reading a book on Japanese grammar. Just my (not so humble) opinion. Binni -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com [mailto:rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com] På vegne af Kevin McCaughey Sendt: 26. april 2012 00:04 Til: rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com Emne: [Rails] Re: To developers of Rails: Feeble documentation - weakness of Ruby and the Ruby on Rails (2nd editi Robert Walker wrote in post #1058190: > If every method, of > every class, were fully documented by the team building Rails then > nothing would ever get done. This is the perenail excuse - It's too big, so we just won't bother. I have been learning for a while now, and my journey started with Ruby. I am reading that RoR is falling out of fashion. I think the reason for that is all the problems + lack of proper documentation. Possibly also the meandering development, which seems to follow no logic. STOP! Stop adding bits on and go back and tidy up the mess. R/RoR is a disaster as compared to other programming languages, and unless it gets things (a) working and (b) documented, it will fall to the next big thing (node?). All those screencasts I watched with machines that were already set up with 123 steps done, so they didn't splutter errors every step of the way, which is the ACTUAL experience that anyone new to R/RoR will have. I say this at the end of a day spent yet again fighting RoR. The asnwers I needed I found in some obscure forum, "oh error 6571, yeah that one! Yeah well you do these 10 steps, then do that, do this, bind this with that, run bundler, edit the config.yml with the string you get at such and such's blog..." etc etc. It's a total mess. If the community wants to be taken in any way seriously they should stop all development, fix it, document it and get it installing and (within reason) able to be used in production. For me it has been nothing but one bloody problem over another since I started on this 3 months ago. C++ was much, much easier (15 years ago). Your community is a fragmented mess too frankly. Sorry, just had to get it out - Sergie just confirmed what I have been trying to lie to myself about. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
