JRuby -- what an awful name
Today is the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President JFK. As you may recall, Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly shot JFK, and Jack Ruby shot LHO 2 days later. I'd find the name JRuby loathsome on any day, but yesterday I came across a programming language with that name. "JRuby is an 100% pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language." http://jruby.codehaus.org/ The Codehaus Foundation is an open-source group. I do suppose that those who did this knew the connotations. Ah, coder youth. But didn't somebody tell them? I still grieve 45 years later, but now I have hope. Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology University of Toronto 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________
On 22-Nov-08, at 2:44 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
I do suppose that those who did this knew the connotations. Ah, coder youth. But didn't somebody tell them?
I still grieve 45 years later, but now I have hope.
Barry Wellman
I do not think they are associated that way. I do not think this was done on purpose. Java is commonly J and Ruby is Ruby It is too bad that you may have never been a coder youth yourself perhaps you were? I was and I never had the power to name a language as I doubt the namers of this are teens. I see some sort of agism here. It brings up a common assumption in computer science that programming is not political. Lessig tried to argue otherwise but ask some programmers. You may find them as apathetic about politics as many. Is this not seeing too much significance in this random connection?
The naming follows a convention I suppose - 'J' + 'Name of Programming language' is frequently used in projects aiming to enable use of other languages from within Java. There are also JPython, JPHP etc. Ralph -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org on behalf of Peter Timusk Sent: Sat 11/22/2008 9:45 PM To: Barry Wellman Cc: communication and information technology section asa; aoir list Subject: Re: [Air-L] JRuby -- what an awful name On 22-Nov-08, at 2:44 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
I do suppose that those who did this knew the connotations. Ah, coder youth. But didn't somebody tell them?
I still grieve 45 years later, but now I have hope.
Barry Wellman
I do not think they are associated that way. I do not think this was done on purpose. Java is commonly J and Ruby is Ruby It is too bad that you may have never been a coder youth yourself perhaps you were? I was and I never had the power to name a language as I doubt the namers of this are teens. I see some sort of agism here. It brings up a common assumption in computer science that programming is not political. Lessig tried to argue otherwise but ask some programmers. You may find them as apathetic about politics as many. Is this not seeing too much significance in this random connection? _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.
participants (3)
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Barry Wellman -
Barthel Ralph -
Peter Timusk