Why Ruby?

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 21/12/2010 21:24, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/21/10 2:38 PM, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>> On 13/12/2010 15:49, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 12/13/10 9:11 AM, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
>>>> On 12/13/2010 09:08 AM, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>>>>> Yes I am :-)
>>>>
>>>> Since you were the Descent author, I wonder how you feel about Ruby's
>>>> lack of static typing. In the video, the speaker bashes type safety as
>>>> "having your balls fondled at the airport", that is, security theater
>>>> that doesn't accomplish much.
>>>
>>> By the way, I couldn't stop cringing at the distasteful, male-centric
>>> sexual jokes that the talk is peppered with. Wonder if there was any
>>> woman in the audience, and how she might have felt. And this is not a
>>> ghetto rant - it's the keynote of a major Ruby conference! (And I'm
>>> definitely not a prude.) Am I alone in thinking that this is not what
>>> our metier should evolve into?
>>>
>>> Besides, the argument in favor of dynamic typing is one of the most
>>> disingenuous around. C is a language for consenting adults that gives
>>> you that kind of freedom. If we took the speaker's arguments to their
>>> logical conclusion, Ruby would be a language for people who don't care
>>> about correctness, despise efficiency, and have contempt for modularity.
>>
>>
>> Ah, hold on a second. I agree the talk was rude and unprofessional (not
>> that it was meant to be either), but I disagree it was sexist or
>> offensive to women. Looking at the comment in question, "having your
>> balls fondled at the airport", it's simply something that you cannot
>> convey with anywhere the same meaning in a gender-neutral way ("having
>> your gonads fondled at the airports"?... "having your genitals fondled
>> at the airport"?... "having your crotch fondled at the airport"?...)
>
> You presuppose there's a need to stick with the original metaphor. There
> are many good metaphors to use, and there are a lot of good jokes around
> the "porn scanners".
>
>> For better or worse, "balls" has become a metaphor for braveness,
>> boldness, power, recklessness, (or a combination therefore), and has
>> even been applied to women some times ("does she have the balls to do
>> that?").
>
> There are a lot of actually good jokes around that topic. I think this
> one, for example, is not gross at all: when describing the shortcomings
> of iterators, I mentioned "you have to have a pair to do anything". I
> delivered that with a straight face and it was really interesting to see
> the audience slowly getting the doublespeak and starting to laugh with
> various latencies. I am subjective but I think that one is firmly on the
> opposite side of a thin line than the "fondled balls" joke.
>
>
> Andrei

I forgot part of my argument actually: Just as the "balls" metaphor has 
that meaning, conversely, "being grabbed by the balls" means kinda the 
opposite: being subjugated, dominated, restrained, kept-under-control, 
emasculated, etc.. So I think the "having your balls fondled at the 
airport" is a direct allusion to that metaphor, which goes in line with 
the talk's general theme of anti-authoritarianism.
So yes, I am presupposing there's a need to stick with the original 
metaphor. (in order to convey the subjugation meaning/allusion.)

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer