Nick Sieger: Rare Rubies tag:blog.nicksieger.com,2005:Typo Typo 2010-11-22T19:38:57+00:00 Nick Sieger urn:uuid:08507152-87fb-40ee-9e73-b3644c2c5619 2007-05-24T17:16:05+00:00 2010-11-22T19:38:57+00:00 Rare Rubies <p>Stumbling upon a description of a <a href="http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/ruby/index.htm">rare Burmese Ruby gemstone housed in the Smithsonian</a>, this line popped out at me:</p> <blockquote> <p>While sapphire, emerald and diamond gems weighing hundreds of carats exist, high quality Burmese rubies larger than 20 carats are exceedingly rare&#46;</p> </blockquote> <p>We could rephrase that a bit:</p> <blockquote> <p>While Java, C++, and C# programs weighing hundreds of thousands of lines of code exist, high quality Ruby programs larger than 2000 lines are exceedingly rare&#46;</p> </blockquote> <p>Isn&#8217;t it strange how you <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone">hardly notice a difference</a>?</p> <p><img src="http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/images/ruby/main_ruby2.jpg" alt="Carmen Lucia Ruby"/></p>