If learning a simple, conceptually mainstream language such as Ruby is too high a price to pay to get away from the madness of Ant and Maven, as it seems to be for some people commenting on Raven, I'm inclined to think you are in the wrong line of work. And Ant and Maven are hardly zero learning curve tools just because the syntax uses XML.

It's possible that Raven (or JRake) isn't the right solution, but the irrational fear evident, for example, in this TheServerSide thread, would be hard to believe if it wasn't just business as usual in the Java world.

Loosely translated, he was talking on the phone:

Look, Johanna, I'm sorry, but I've got a dentist on Monday, and Hannu has a time for an ornithologist [...] I can't help it, I've got a time for an ornithologist and Hannu has an appointment with a dentist.

Two remarkable pieces of writing in the blogosphere today, both ending up in the instant classics section of their respective categories.

The first one is a tutorial style piece exposing the inner life of a search engine. A simple full-text search engine in 200 lines of Ruby. It's concise, it's clear and after reading it anyone can write a simple search engine. If only all things in the world of code were explained that well.

The second one has been linked from all over the place, including some A-listers, so this probably doesn't come as news. But it's so good it deserves all the attention it can get. Socrates takes on WS-Mumbojumbo: The S stands for Simple.