Why Ruby?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/21/10 4:02 PM, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> 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.)

I'd almost agree had the word "fondled" been absent :o).

Andrei