Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Headius and the Elephant

At Cisco we used to have the phrase "No Technology Religion" on our badges and although this is easier said than done, it is the thought that counts (to double up on cliches).

It is the religious fervor (intolerance of diversity and the belief in one path to enlightenment vs. many ways to climb the mountain) that seems to be one of the differences. between between the Python & Ruby communities:

The is illustrated in the The Elephant from earlier this month:

I don't see this in the Python community, for example, which might surprise some Rubyists. Pythonistas seem to have positively embraced both IronPython and Jython. There's no side-chatter at the conferences about the evils of anything with a J in it. There's no mocking slides, no jokes at Jython or IronPython developers' expense. No "Python elite" cliques actively working to shut Jython or IronPython out, or to discourage others from considering them. The community as a whole--Guido included--seems to be genuinely thankful for implementation diversity. Even if one of them does have a J in it.