SciRuby mission statement

[Sameer Deshmukh]

Hello all,

 

As I had discussed over the GChat the other day, I think it is pretty important for us to have a set of principles that we can follow to take our community forward. For the mission statement to have credibility, it is important for it to be finalized by all interested parties. Here’s my version of it. Please edit it as per your thoughts and post in this thread.

 

SciRuby’s mission statement is as follows:

• To develop cutting edge tools for scientific computing and data analysis in Ruby.

• To complement Ruby’s extensive web infrastructure with high-speed tools and eliminate the need for Rubyists to turn to other languages/frameworks for their computing needs.

• To identify and leapfrog to the latest technologies by leveraging the knowledge and infrastructure of other languages/frameworks.

• To be willing to go through extra hoops on the development side in order to provide a good user experience.

• To be second to none in terms of robustness, speed and user friendliness of our tools.
  

Regards,

Sameer Deshmukh

[Karthikeyan A K]

This kind of bold mission requires lot of dedicated Ruby cracks! Wish all the best for success.

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Karthikeyan A K

[John Woods]

I don't think we should mention the web infrastructure. I just don't see that we're getting that much in the way of assistance from the Rails community, nor that many users from that area. If people are involved in SciRuby right now it's because they're scientists, not to do stuff with the web.

I also think this particular iteration of the mission statement sounds a little too corporate and reachy-outy. "Leapfrog" and "leveraging" — this looks like corporate psychobabble, and I'm not actually sure what you mean by it. Can you provide a concrete example?

How do we go through extra hoops on the development side? This sounds like something my employer would write — which is true, because we're paid to jump through extra hoops to make the customer happy. But SciRuby's customers are the public, and we really go through exactly as many hoops as we're able to get volunteers to jump us through — no more and no less.

Same general reply to the final bullet. To whom would we be second to? Is there another Ruby scientific tools 501(c)(3) out there? Or are we talking about other languages, too? Because, TBH, I don't see us as being second-to-none when we also take into account SciPy. It would be good if we were second-to-none, but they have a couple years and person-hours of advantages on us right now. :)

I'd say something like this:

• To provide the Ruby language with a suite of tools for scientific computing, data analysis, and data visualization;
• To create a community facilitating the use of the Ruby language to advance science;
• To provide mentorship for underrepresented individuals interested in science and computer programming.