Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

A while back I went through the personal struggle of trying to decide which .NET dynamic language I was going to adopt. After some fairly lengthy consideration and with a bit of help from Michael Foord, I chose IronPython. Recently I posed this question to Michael: are .NET developers experiencing some *romantic* attraction to IronRuby? Michael I think was a little taken aback and not sure how to respond, most likely I didn’t frame the question eloquently nor clearly enough and so I will take another shot at it here.

Let me explain what I mean by “romantic”. I am noticing that people (I know) in the .NET development community are leaning more towards IronRuby when faced  with the choice. Perhaps my perspective over the so-called community isn’t broad enough to make any sweeping generalisations here, I understand that, nonetheless, tucked away here in my small corner of the universe I get a sense that I am observing a kind of default (if not romantic and sometimes perhaps envy driven) choice of IronRuby over IronPython.

What are the contributing factors? Some very high profile .NET people have jumped the .NET ship in favour of developing with MRI in the recent past. The most obvious connection I guess may be that ASP.NET developers (who by far number the majority in the .NET employment pool) have an vested interest in the successes of ROR which may account for this perceived phenomenon. I also get the feeling the feeling that Ruby gets a better deal in the hype stakes and that could also be having some impact.

I wonder has anyone else noted this? Figment of my imagination? Way off the beam? One thing is for sure, neither seem to be playing a real part in the commercial world yet; a search on seek.com.au (a well known job market web site) for IronRuby or IronPython or DLR, will sadly produce no results. This is understandable as IronRuby in only just recently gone RC1, but IronPython has been around a little while and some people in some parts of the world do make a living with it already.

UPDATE:

Oh I did forget that perhaps people just think Ruby is the better of the two languages?

During my journey in learning Ruby / IronRuby, I have caught myself often naming things in C# with a Ruby convention or BDD test naming regime. To be extreme here’s an example:

var customer_to_make_preferred = Get_Customer_By_Id<ICustomerMakePrefered>();

//OR METHODS LIKE THIS

public void Group_By_Orders_And_Print_To_Console_Window()
{
    //…..etc
}

I really find a benefit in greater understanding when reading code when I take this approach. Now it’s true I have been programming in C# for some 10 years and I don’t know if this kind of behaviour will see me excommunicated from the circle of brethren or not but I would like to know what others think.

Opinions please! And yes I know this is gonna be like waving a red flag in front of a raging bull :). And for the Ruby people, I am only proposing the extended underscored naming convention and nothing else – it’s all about naming and that’s it – ya basta!

Learn a new language each year. Or so the polyglot mantra goes. Sounds feasible enough right? After all, the more experienced we get as programmers the lower the barriers to entry in learning new languages right?

Over the last six months or so I have been trying to learn Ruby / IronRuby with mixed success. First up I started by reading some free information aimed at learning POR or plain old Ruby as I call it - sorry excuse the tongue in check but I couldn’t resist the chance coin my very own ‘Plain Old’ acronym given half the chance :). I started by reading Mr Neighbourly’s Humble little Ruby Book and taking all the examples and writing them (in NetBeans Ruby Edition) and then adding to those examples with some further experimenting of my own. This was all going nicely until the real world (working life) got hold of me in one way or another and my time in following through with Ruby started to wane. I have since then attempted to reorganise aspects of my daily life in a way that would incorporate Ruby in the hope of picking up the momentum again, for example I am posting some of my Patterns series in Ruby and even bought Ivan Porto Carrero’s rough cuts of his unfinished book, but still I feel it’s not enough to really let the early work take root and ferment.

So what’s required to really learn  this new language? If you think about how we learn languages and develop our skills in them, it relies heavily on becoming active in developing with the given language, however most of us are employed in an environment where the expectation is that we will be developing (with some specialisation) in a single language and on a single platform. In my opinion I believe that what is needed is a project that is persistent and on going, all of which is easier said than done, there always seems to be an omnipresence of DotNet related learning and on the surface that should take precedence; how do I choose?

This year I am going to continue my learning of XAML based UI technology, develop a DSL for data transformation in a particular domain of interest, continue my learning of the Entity Framework as deeply as possible and really give NServiceBus a lot more time and use it at every (appropriate) opportunity and of course I will continue to write this blog. So where is my quality Ruby time going to come from? Answer I don’t know but I feel strongly that being a polyglot programmer of any depth means taking on significant projects in your newly chosen language of learning. Perhaps I have to settle with being a polyglot dilettante in the shorter term?

I would love to hear some other opinions on all this.