ctrimble asks: "I'm the acquisitions editor for a technical publishing company (not the one with the animals, but we have had six of our books reviewed favourably, here on Slashdot) and part of my job is to determine what books my company should publish. This consists, mainly, of me sitting in my apartment eating peanut butter sandwiches, reading Slashdot, and writing perl scripts that generate titles in a Madlibs type fashion: "Hacking Ruby for Midgets" (forthcoming in July). Unfortunately, there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between my methodology and filling the needs of the programming community. Market research is tough to do in tech books since you need to forcast about a year in advance. So, let me pose the question to you -- what kind of books do you want? What spots do you see as needing to be filled? For that matter, do you even want dead-tree books, or are eBooks and/or online documentation sufficient?"

Lisa writes: "Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto talks about Ruby's history, the influence of Perl and Python on Ruby, and his new book, Ruby in a Nutshell. In the article he explains: "When I started the language project, I was joking with a friend that the project must be code-named after a gemstone's name (àla Perl). So my friend came up with "ruby". It's a short name for a beautiful and highly valued stone. So I picked up that name, and it eventually became the official name of the language. Later, I found out that pearl is the birthstone for June, and ruby is the birthstone for July. I believe Ruby is an appropriate name for the next language after Perl.""

Slashback with more (below) on: censorship in germany, Xbox gushing, *nix-ish Window managers on That Darn Operating System, and more. Enjoy!

PM4RK5 writes: "For those of you interested, the News & Observer had an interview with Andrew Hunt about Ruby, in response to a book he and David Thomas authored. The book, "The Pragmatic Programmer" was written for the old-fashioned programmers who seek to learn how to use newer technologies, and use them better. It has an example of code differences between Java and Ruby, on how to print 'Ho Ho Ho.' Contains information and thoughts on its current applications, how its growing, and the types of things that it is suited for."

ShoeHorn writes: "Here is a good article (1st of a 4 part series), that introduces you to the Ruby language. If you are currently a programmer coming from the likes of C++, Perl, or Python, you will see some strong similarities (especially to Python)."

O'Reilly has put up an interesting interview with Randal Schwartz and Tom Phoenix, the guys behind the llama book (Learning Perl). In addition to all the perl stuff, Randal gives his take on Smalltalk, Ruby, and Python. And (not surprisingly) they plug the newest edition of the book.

Last week, you asked Shawn Gordon questions about his venture TheKompany, an outfit which has been (fairly) quietly working on a small flotilla of software for GNU/Linux systems, and some cross-platform applications as well. His responses are below; you might be surprised at a few of them. (And some lucky Debian hacker might even pick up a job.)

flounder_p queries: "I have recently started playing with the Ruby programming language and think it's really great. I was just wondering why you guys think Ruby has not caught on more in the open source community than it has? How many of you guys are using it? Will it ever catch on or will it always be looked at as yet another scripting language? Don't get me wrong scripting languages are great (and I live by Perl) but I still hope to see Ruby catch on more. I would like to hear opinions on things on why Ruby is good or bad not on why OOP is good or bad. We have already had that discussion here." On a side note, a little birdy tells me that BlackAdder has plans for Ruby support in its next beta.

zby queries: "I've been using the 'Perl Cookbook' extensively for 2 years already and have found the book to be really helpful. Recently I've been learning about Ruby and I really miss that kind of resource. That gave me the idea to build that kind of knowlege base as an free project. I believe it just fits ideally, and could be run on a Slash or Scoop based system without any modifications from the beginning." It sounds like a grand idea, however are there any other such resources on the web?

swagr writes "Some new and interesting information on the Ruby website.
1: O'Reilly is apparently publishing a translation of "Ruby Pocket Reference" (although this news doesn't seem to be on O'Reilly's site
2: There is a Ruby Conference happening in October.
3: They need some help with a Ruby mascot (1337 gimpists: go nuts)."

Here you go - answers to your questions for Guido van Rossum about Python, its future, licensing hassles with the Free Software Foundation, and other neat stuff. Thanks, Guido!

John Squeaker writes: "Last week while the rest of the world was worrying about corporations warning, and dot coms failing, 300 smalltalkers got together in Chicago to plan for the future. Given the fact corporations like Dell have canceled their user conference this year we were very pleased with the attendence figures. The conference hosted a key note by Alan Kay, a *must* read, and the mood and general feeling of the show was captured in this excellent trip report. More information on the conference plus links to the papers/tutorials presented there can be found at the conference site. Do you want to know where OO languages like Java, Ruby, Squeak, and SmallScript come from? Then come visit us for the real story, and see what you can expect to hear in the next five years." The whole thing is interesting, but I particularly liked Tuesday. Smalltalkers seem to have a secret from everyone else sometimes ...

While Ruby isn't new, it's one scripting-and-everything else language which has yet to break out (in the U.S. at least) the way Perl and Python have. Chromatic may help buck that non-trend -- he says that Ruby is one polished gem of a language, and below he introduces a book on Ruby that he compares in importance with the O'Reilly Camel book.

Kailden asks: "I've run across several references to Ruby, a scripting language that claims to be a hybrid of Perl and Python. Supposedly, this language has taken Japan by storm. I'm looking for Slashdot's verdict before jumping in. Has anyone outside the Ruby site used this language? What advantages/disadvantages have you found?"

sdelmont writes "The developers of Rubinius, an experimental Ruby interpreter inspired by SmallTalk, have been discussing the possibility of adding a Lisp dialect to their VM. Pat Eyler collected some ideas and opinions from the people involved and it makes for some interesting reading. For many, Ruby already is an acceptable Lisp, and the language itself started as a 'perlification' of Lisp (even Matz says so) so it is perhaps fitting and might help explain why the whole idea feels right. Now, if someone added support for VB and gave it the respect it deserves, the world would be a better place."