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RedHanded

You've Dazzled Us, Now Here is Your Cozy Chair #

by why in inspect

So, if you’ve purchased anything from ThinkGeek lately, you might have taken their outgoing survey, just a handful of questions, including a query into your favorite programming language. While stocking up on plushies, Brian Marick took the survey and scanned for his chosen language:

I scanned down to the Rs and was appalled to find that Ruby wasn’t listed, though Rebol and Rexx were and Python was just above them. But I later noticed that the list is not entirely alphabetical. Certain languages have been promoted to the front of the list: C, C++, Objective C, Perl, Java, ..., and Ruby. This is the big time, folks.

Very nice. Finally, a bit of recognition. Let’s not let ThinkGeek off easy, though. Please write and let them know that Ruby should be available as an answer to all the other survey questions as well. (Full story, noticed by Bil Kleb.)

said on 24 Sep 2005 at 14:21

Whoah, that’s pretty cool indeed!

said on 24 Sep 2005 at 16:39

No, that’s not good enough. We need TG surveys to look like this:

  1. Ruby ruby ruby ruby ruby Ruby ruby?
    1. Ruby
    2. Ruby
    3. Ruby
    4. Ruby
  2. Ruby ruby ruby, ruby ruby ruby Ruby Ruby, ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby ruby?
    1. Ruby Ruby
    2. Ruby Ruby Ruby ruby
  3. Ruby: Ruby ruby Ruby?
    1. Ruby
    2. Ruby
  4. Ruby ruby ruby:
    1. Ruby

Only then will the proud maintainers of ThinkGeek be invited into our growing Rubiverse. There, in the darkest depths of Hades, lit only by the incandest glow of a single, gigantic, Ruby-red disco-ball, they will discover the throbbing mass of Rubyists, speaking not in any typical language, nor in the pathetic Ruby-to-text projection we are forced to deal with in the above-ground world, but in the enigmatic tones of Ruby-Information-Set, where Ruby expressions are individual atoms of thought, where unheard projections of lexical linkages transcend the need for variable names, and where vocal chords lay dormant, all but replaced by the Rubynx.

There, the bespectacled, young ThinkGeek maintainer will be lost in a sea of Ruby, unable to hear or to speak, immature as his Rubynx yet lies. There, he will work day and night to train his Rubynx, so that he might one day learn to communicate with the others in pure Ruby. There, he will learn to appreciate how “def” is no longer a token, but merely an inflection of the atom of expression that is the method definition. At restaurants, “Waiter#call” will become an incantation of the past to him.

In fact, in the Rubiverse, the individual Objects that compose Space and Time are exposed to the Rubyist, and he will come to discover and contribute to the Libraries of Space-Time manipulations such as “make_turkey_sandwich”, “befriend(rubyist)”, and “world_peace” that Rubiverse communities have built over time. (Mind you, “make_turkey_sandwich” is just a textual project of something that can only be expressed via Rubynx, but you get the idea.)

There, and only there, will he discover true Love, and only there will he be able to override its method definitions.

But only after he rigs the surveys.

said on 25 Sep 2005 at 01:17

That whole “ruby ruby ruby” thing reminds me scene from “Being John Malkovich” where Malkovich visits his (subconscious) mind and everywhere he looks he finds small replicas of himself speaking weird language consisting of one word only—“Malkovich”.

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