Re: Any one working on...C# to IronRuby Converter...?

Ruby IronRuby
1

Would a converter even be worth it? The last time I tried to use one,
the code was worthless, and had to be rewritten anyway.

A, probably better, option would be for someone to write some starter
kits that could be distributed with IronRuby. I know I would appreciate
it.

JD

2

2008/8/6 Jim D. [email protected]:

Would a converter even be worth it? The last time I tried to use one, the code was worthless, and had to be rewritten anyway.

Well, for some codes full of simple if-then-else, such converters can
be useful. Usefulness of cross-language converters are limited in
general though.

3

I’ve never found converters to be useful either. They generally don’t
result in code that takes advantage of the language which you’re
converting
to and as such many of the idioms for the particular language are lost
in
the “translation”. This typically results in people getting a bad
flavor
for a language and having a poor initial impression.

I recognize that my feelings on this matter are likely skewed due to me
using poor converters in the past, but, nonetheless, I’m very skeptical.

+1 on someone creating starter kits from scratch to show the
power/usefulness of IronRuby :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Steve

4

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:59:46 -0600, Oleg T.
[email protected]
wrote:

Migration to ASP.NET MVC is interesting point. What else?

Migration to XSLT 2.0? You know, the language God intended for us all
to
code in. :wink: (Come on, Oleg! If anybody can get MSFT to develop an XSLT
2.0 processor it’s you! :D)

–
/M:D

M. David P.
Co-Founder & Chief Architect, 3rd&Urban, LLC
Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Mobile: (206) 999-0588
http://3rdandUrban.com | http://amp.fm |
M. David Peterson |
Radar – O’Reilly

5

Well, language converters might be useful sometimes:

  1.   When you have huge codebase in some language (usually an old

one) and having trouble find people to maintain it (think Cobol payroll
system written 30 years ago)

  1.   When you have huge codebase on some very expensive

platform/system and want to cut costs by switching to open
platform/system

  1.   When you are very good at one language and want to use it for

something it wasn’t designed for (think GWT aka Java to Javascript
translator)

I’ve been working for years in a company that makes millions doing
points 1 and 2.
I’m not sure how useful C# to Ruby compiler would be though. Starter
kits’ goal is to demonstrate the language abilities and converted code
can be really ugly so that probably bad idea.
Migration to ASP.NET MVC is interesting point. What else?

Oleg

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve E.
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 5:58 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] Any one working on…C# to IronRuby
Converter…?

I’ve never found converters to be useful either. They generally don’t
result in code that takes advantage of the language which you’re
converting to and as such many of the idioms for the particular language
are lost in the “translation”. This typically results in people getting
a bad flavor for a language and having a poor initial impression.

I recognize that my feelings on this matter are likely skewed due to me
using poor converters in the past, but, nonetheless, I’m very skeptical.

+1 on someone creating starter kits from scratch to show the
power/usefulness of IronRuby :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Steve
On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 4:46 AM, Sanghyeon S.
<[email protected]mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
2008/8/6 Jim D.
<[email protected]mailto:[email protected]>:

Would a converter even be worth it? The last time I tried to use one, the code was worthless, and had to be rewritten anyway.
Well, for some codes full of simple if-then-else, such converters can
be useful. Usefulness of cross-language converters are limited in
general though.

–
Seo S.