# How is Ruby the "Perlification" of Lisp? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [January 29, 2007, 4:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-is-ruby-the-perlification-of-lisp/83711 "2007-01-29T04:55:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Griff)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2007, 4:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-is-ruby-the-perlification-of-lisp/83711/1 "2007-01-29T04:55:41Z")
I read that Ruby is the “Perlification” of Lisp or something to that effect. May some please elaborate on this? ---
**Author:** ![Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Griff)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2007, 5:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-is-ruby-the-perlification-of-lisp/83711/2 "2007-01-29T05:09:42Z")
On 1/28/07, Griff [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I read that Ruby is the “Perlification” of Lisp or something to that > effect. Where did you read this? It’d be helpful if we knew the context of the comment. ---
**Author:** ![Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Griff)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2007, 5:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-is-ruby-the-perlification-of-lisp/83711/3 "2007-01-29T05:14:43Z")
Griff wrote: > I read that Ruby is the “Perlification” of Lisp or something to that > effect. > > May some please elaborate on this? I don’t think it’s a particularly accurate or useful characterization of Ruby, since Ruby started out with something neither Lisp nor Perl was born with – “everything is an object”, objects, classes and methods. Ruby is Ruby. – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P) [http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/](http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/) If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire. ---
**Author:** ![Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Griff)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2007, 10:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-is-ruby-the-perlification-of-lisp/83711/4 "2007-01-29T10:45:20Z")
On 1/29/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I don’t think it’s a particularly accurate or useful characterization of > Ruby, since Ruby started out with something neither Lisp nor Perl was > born with – “everything is an object”, objects, classes and methods. > Ruby is Ruby. Matz was once quoted as admitting that Ruby is a bad rip off of Smalltalk or Lisp, that’s nicer to people. As someone with a slight acquaintance with Scheme and Common Lisp I could say that it’s a reasonable characterization. Ruby got the “everything is an object” idea from Smalltalk, which in turn was greatly influenced by CLOS. These systems are all described as systems based on the “Right Thing” or MIT approach to design. Perl on the other hand is the very embodiment of the “Worse-is-Better” or New Jersey approach to design. [1] The way I see it, Ruby has become a way to combine both approaches to get the best of both worlds. [1] See here: [The Rise of ``Worse is Better''](http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html) ---
**Author:** ![Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Griff)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2007, 3:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-is-ruby-the-perlification-of-lisp/83711/5 "2007-01-29T15:58:35Z")
Dido S. wrote: > idea from Smalltalk, which in turn was greatly influenced by CLOS. > These systems are all described as systems based on the “Right Thing” > or MIT approach to design. Perl on the other hand is the very > embodiment of the “Worse-is-Better” or New Jersey approach to design. > [1] The way I see it, Ruby has become a way to combine both approaches > to get the best of both worlds. > > [1] See here: [The Rise of ``Worse is Better''](http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html) OK … here goes … my last rant for the weekend 🙂 The message from Matz Bil K. posted: "Ruby is a language designed in the following steps: - take a simple lisp language (like one prior to CL). - remove macros, s-expression. - add simple object system (much simpler than CLOS). - add blocks, inspired by higher order functions. - add methods found in Smalltalk. - add functionality found in Perl (in OO way). So, Ruby was a Lisp originally, in theory. Let’s call it MatzLisp from now on. ;-)" Now let’s parse this: 1. Take a simple lisp language (like one prior to CL). OK … let’s go all the way back to Lisp 1.5, to avoid the MIT - Stanford schism or the Scheme schism. 2. Remove macros … OK … remove s-expression … WHOA, NELLIE! You’ve just destroyed Lisp! Lisp _is_ s-expressions, m-expressions, and the fact that you can code m-expressions into s-expressions and then write EVAL and APPLY (and later EVALQUOTE, READ-EVAL-PRINT loops, etc. in Lisp. At this point, about all you have left of Lisp is LAMBDA, unless you want to count call-with-current-continuation, which came from Scheme. 🙂 3. Add simple object system (much simpler than CLOS) … OK … although the Ruby object system of classes, objects and methods, single inheritance, etc., looks to me very much like that of Java without some of Java’s nastier quirks … it’s much cleaner. I think of it as a pretty much “standard second-generation classes-objects-methods” structure – “humanizing” the somewhat raw but revolutionary concepts of Smalltalk. 4. Add blocks, inspired by higher order functions. OK 5. Add methods found in Smalltalk. OK … see 3 above. 6 Add functionality found in Perl (in OO way). Well … About all I’ve seen in Ruby that looks like it’s directly coming from Perl is regular expressions, the ability to ignore certain syntactical things like parentheses whenever possible, constructs like “xxx if yyy”, and Perl’s ghastly “$!” variables, which both Perl and Ruby have thankfully translated into English. And I wouldn’t say “in OO way” – what Ruby has done is much better than that! First of all, regular expressions are first-class objects in Ruby, not a confusing syntactic and semantic half-breed with strings like they are in Perl. Second, Ruby has reflection and introspection baked right in – the first versions of Java didn’t even have that! And finally, Ruby is much cleaner in the way it handles the dynamic variable. In Perl, at least the versions I learned on, variables were essentially stored as strings until you turned them into something else, for example, by saying “$a += 0.4;”. In Ruby, a variable is a reference to an object, just like Java. I think my main point in all this ranting and raving is that, while Ruby may have “evolved from Lisp” in the thought processes of Matz, the fundamental core of Lisp – the things that make Lisp Lisp – is long gone in Ruby, and it’s a lot easier, for me at least, to think of Ruby as a happy marriage of the best parts of Java and Perl, with a few advanced constructs added from the more “theoretical” languages like Lisp and CLU. And when I try to “think in Lisp” while programming Ruby, I get a headache. 🙂 For that matter, I get a headache now when I try to program in Lisp or Scheme. 🙂 – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P) [http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/](http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/) If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire. ---
**Author:** ![Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@Griff](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Griff)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2007, 11:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-is-ruby-the-perlification-of-lisp/83711/6 "2007-09-25T23:04:17Z")
Griff wrote: > I read that Ruby is the “Perlification” of Lisp or something to that > effect. > > May some please elaborate on this? Let’s see what our benevolent dictator has to say… [matz lisp ruby - Google Search](http://www.google.com/search?q=matz+lisp+ruby) reveals, [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/179642](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/179642) Regards,