# Re: ed borasky and his second favourite programming language

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 4, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063 "2006-07-04T18:05:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/1 "2006-07-04T18:05:21Z")

</div>

Thank you, Paul, for the link.  
Assuming that Ara’s link to Ed Borasky’s opinions also makes the case  
for R,  
I’ve two questions:

obviously, you can like features of R very much, but what do you do  
if the code you have to write doesn’t have anything to do with  
statistics?  
What are the nice features of R that make it superior to Ruby in Ed  
Borasky’s opinion - and do we agree with him ?

Ruby is “more general” than R (since there are bindings for R  
available),  
and there are also bindings to other scientific programs/packages e.g.,  
GSL  
(if you want to to do numerical integration or random number  
generation).

I think one should compare languages that do about the same things  
with respect to how they do it.

Best regards,

Axel

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 6:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/2 "2006-07-04T18:50:47Z")

</div>

On Jul 4, 2006, at 17:03, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote:

> Thank you, Paul, for the link.  
> Assuming that Ara’s link to Ed Borasky’s opinions also makes the  
> case for R,  
> I’ve two questions:
> 
> obviously, you can like features of R very much, but what do you do  
> if the code you have to write doesn’t have anything to do with  
> statistics?

Presumably, if you don’t just use R, you use your second-favourite  
language. You’re allowed to use more than one, you know.

> What are the nice features of R that make it superior to Ruby in Ed  
> Borasky’s opinion - and do we agree with him ?

I can’t speak for Ed, but for me (I use it as well), it does  
precisely what it needs to do, and it does it succinctly and well.  
Which, not coincidentally, are the same reasons I use Ruby for the  
things I use Ruby for, and the same reasons I use Prolog for the  
things I use Prolog for.

> Ruby is “more general” than R (since there are bindings for R  
> available),  
> and there are also bindings to other scientific programs/packages  
> e.g., GSL  
> (if you want to to do numerical integration or random number  
> generation).

But what does this statement mean? Simply being “more  
general” (which I’ll just accept for now, even though the definition  
seems a little wishy-washy) doesn’t get you anywhere. Being better  
at particular tasks is what wins.

> I think one should compare languages that do about the same things  
> with respect to how they do it.

That might be interesting for its own sake, but it doesn’t really  
teach us anything about the languages being compared. Languages are  
just tools, and not all tools are meant to do the same things. This  
one drives nails, this one turns screws, this one calculates  
eigenvectors, and this one makes foxes eat bacon. Knowing those  
aspects of a language are much more valuable than, say, knowing which  
one is faster at a ‘hello world’ web application.

matthew smillie.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 8:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/3 "2006-07-04T20:22:47Z")

</div>

Matthew S. wrote:

> On Jul 4, 2006, at 17:03, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote:
> 
> > Thank you, Paul, for the link.  
> > Assuming that Ara’s link to Ed Borasky’s opinions also makes the case  
> > for R,  
> > I’ve two questions:
> > 
> > obviously, you can like features of R very much, but what do you do  
> > if the code you have to write doesn’t have anything to do with  
> > statistics?  
> > Let me put a little context on this. At the time I adopted R, the  
> > project I was working on was written nearly 100 percent in Perl, and  
> > most of that was Perl 4 code I had hand-translated from some primitive  
> > “awk” scripts. The need arose to create some statistical graphs  
> > (boxplots mostly) and other late 20th century artifacts.

So I went hunting for an open-source tool that would do that. The  
requirements, other than open source and the ability to do the graphs,  
was that the package be able to run on either Windows or Linux, and that  
it be “accessible from Perl” in some sense. A nice-to-have was that it  
could be found on Red Hat media (7.0 IIRC).

There were three candidates: Perl Data Language (PDL), XLisp-Stat, and  
R. PDL is mainly for image processing, and I didn’t see boxplots built  
in, so it dropped out first. I personally didn’t have any problem  
programming in Lisp, but I wasn’t willing to saddle my colleagues with  
the task of learning Lisp, and the R community looked larger and more  
vibrant than the XLisp-Stat community. So R won out.

My current _modus operandi_ is to do the data crunching in Perl, a task  
for which it was designed, and upload the data into a relational  
database or CSV files, then do the analysis in R. If I were writing all  
of this magic over today, I’d probably build a Rails app and use the R  
math library for the analysis.

Now, to answer the question: “but what do you do  
if the code you have to write doesn’t have anything to do with  
statistics?”

Well, first of all, being a mathematician, I’ll make the claim that  
_any_ sufficiently large task, programming or otherwise, has _some_  
statistics in it. :). Second, if the task is _mostly_ statistics and  
graphics but contains other elements, like the need for a GUI, database  
interface, web serving, regular expression handling – in short, all the  
things we use “scripting languages” like Ruby as our primary tools to  
accomplish – you don’t need to leave R! There are libraries (now) that  
do all of these things.

> > What are the nice features of R that make it superior to Ruby in Ed  
> > Borasky’s opinion - and do we agree with him ?  
> > Clearly R is superior to Ruby for executing the 700-odd packages in the  
> > CRAN, Bioconductor and OmegaHat repositories. 🙂 If you read through  
> > that list, you’ll find a lot of things that R does very well that you  
> > probably never heard of. Of the 700-odd packages, I regularly use  
> > perhaps five or ten – the kernel smoothers, the database interfaces,  
> > the GUI and web servers and occasionally the time series packages.

And clearly Ruby is superior to R for lots of things. They don’t happen  
to be things I get paid to do at the moment. They are things I want to  
learn how to do, which is why I’m learning Ruby. Ruby is, as far as I  
can tell, the best-designed _general purpose_ language to date.

> I can’t speak for Ed, but for me (I use it as well), it does precisely  
> what it needs to do, and it does it succinctly and well. Which, not  
> coincidentally, are the same reasons I use Ruby for the things I use  
> Ruby for, and the same reasons I use Prolog for the things I use  
> Prolog for.  
> I attempted to learn Prolog once. I never got very far with it, and  
> moved on to FORTH. 🙂
> 
> > Ruby is “more general” than R (since there are bindings for R  
> > available),  
> > and there are also bindings to other scientific programs/packages  
> > e.g., GSL  
> > (if you want to to do numerical integration or random number  
> > generation).  
> > I think R has bindings for GSL too – about the only thing I don’t  
> > recall R being able to do is call Ruby. 🙂  
> > I think one should compare languages that do about the same things  
> > with respect to how they do it.  
> > That might be interesting for its own sake, but it doesn’t really  
> > teach us anything about the languages being compared. Languages are  
> > just tools, and not all tools are meant to do the same things. This  
> > one drives nails, this one turns screws, this one calculates  
> > eigenvectors, and this one makes foxes eat bacon. Knowing those  
> > aspects of a language are much more valuable than, say, knowing which  
> > one is faster at a ‘hello world’ web application.  
> > Yeah, but … when C first came out, it was touted as a general-purpose  
> > language, which indeed it is. About the only people who didn’t jump on  
> > the C bandwagon were the AI folks, who were married to Lisp, and the  
> > number crunchers, who were married to FORTRAN. C for all practical  
> > purposes wiped out assembler, PL/I, Ada, Pascal, and even COBOL.

Today, C drives nails, turns screws, calculates eigenvectors, and powers  
Linux, GCC, Perl, Python, PHP, R and Ruby. I’ve never heard of a FORTRAN  
compiler written in FORTRAN. But … Lisp and Scheme for the most part  
still power (and compile) themselves. 🙂

–  
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

> **[世界杯竞猜彩票-世界杯官网竞猜（集团）有限公司](http://www.linuxcapacityplanning.com/)**
>
> 世界杯竞猜彩票一直以来遵守商业道德，世界杯官网竞猜坚持诚信为本，保证诚实经营。世界杯竞猜彩票先后成为安徽省电子商务协会理事单位、安徽省网商协会会员单位、合肥市电子商务协会理事单位、合肥市服务外包行业协会会员单位、安徽省云计算产业促进会会员单位。世界杯官网竞猜一直保持良好的技术及服务态度，更好地为客户服务。

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2006, 12:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/4 "2006-07-05T00:48:05Z")

</div>

Phil T. wrote:

> example.  
> Useful, sure … as fast as, as well supported by “professional  
> statisticians” … that I rather doubt. Languages – both human and  
> programming – co-evolve within a community of creators and users. R  
> co-evolved in a community of statisticians with a highly numerical  
> approach. Maxima co-evolved in a community of scientists with lots of  
> symbolic math to do, mostly having to do with the physics of nuclear  
> energy. It’s pretty clear to me that Rails co-evolved in a community of  
> web application designers and users, but I’m not sure about Ruby – I’m  
> a latecomer to Ruby.

> compare data from other research in your own paper. crazy idea?  
> Couldn’t a mashup of web programming and sci-research-languages lead  
> to a new level of collaboration?  
> Could … and … (pregnant pause) has. Donald Knuth calls this  
> “literate programming.” In the Python universe, it’s well supported by  
> Ed Ream’s “Leo” editor  
> ([http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html](http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html)). R has literate  
> programming “built in” using something called “SWeave”. See

> **[Home - bepress](https://bepress.com)**
>
> Turnkey institutional repository software featuring professional-grade publishing and faculty profiles tools to openly publish, manage and showcase the full spectrum of your institution’s research, scholarship and expertise

for some pointers. I have quite a few links stashed away on literate  
programming, mostly in R. I haven’t taken the time to do a search for  
literate programming in the Ruby context, but I’m sure it’s there.

> something like a wiki so that the research continues to grow on one  
> site? That could certainly lead to a new level of collaboration.  
> Axiom is another language that’s heavily into literate programming and  
> in fact has a wiki as its main portal.

[http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/FrontPage](http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/FrontPage)

> …just brainstorming…  
> Amazing, isn’t it? “Not even the tread of mighty armies can stop an idea  
> whose time has come.” 🙂

–  
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

> **[世界杯竞猜彩票-世界杯官网竞猜（集团）有限公司](http://www.linuxcapacityplanning.com/)**
>
> 世界杯竞猜彩票一直以来遵守商业道德，世界杯官网竞猜坚持诚信为本，保证诚实经营。世界杯竞猜彩票先后成为安徽省电子商务协会理事单位、安徽省网商协会会员单位、合肥市电子商务协会理事单位、合肥市服务外包行业协会会员单位、安徽省云计算产业促进会会员单位。世界杯官网竞猜一直保持良好的技术及服务态度，更好地为客户服务。

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2006, 3:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/5 "2006-07-05T03:08:40Z")

</div>

On 7/4/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> > using Ruby that could be every bit as useful as R for statistics, for
> 
> > them and access the underlying data? It would make it easy to then  
> > compare data from other research in your own paper. crazy idea?  
> > Couldn’t a mashup of web programming and sci-research-languages lead  
> > to a new level of collaboration?  
> > Could … and … (pregnant pause) has. Donald Knuth calls this  
> > “literate programming.”

I’ve heard of literate programming and I’m not quite sure if that’s  
what I’m thinking about… it might be part of the picture, but not  
the whole.

> In the Python universe, it’s well supported by  
> Ed Ream’s “Leo” editor  
> ([http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html](http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html)). R has literate  
> programming “built in” using something called “SWeave”. See
> 
> [Home - bepress](http://www.bepress.com/bioconductor/paper2)

This second link seems to be closer to what I’m thinking.

Ed: do you happen to live in the Portland Oregon area? I’m guessing  
you do based on your choice of beers and the radio station listed on  
your home page. If so there’s a PDX.rb meeting coming up at FreeGeek  
this Thursday evening at 7PM.

Phil

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2006, 5:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/6 "2006-07-05T05:03:26Z")

</div>

On Jul 4, 2006, at 9:47 AM, Matthew S. wrote:

> general" (which I’ll just accept for now, even though the  
> definition seems a little wishy-washy) doesn’t get you anywhere.  
> Being better at particular tasks is what wins.

For small, well-defined problems that won’t change, a specialised  
language is best, if there is an appropriate one.

For large, well-defined specialised problems that won’t change, a  
specialised language is best.

For most projects, we don’t know if the specs will change, if we even  
have detailed specs in the first place. In this case when it’s  
important to be able to deal with unpredictable challenges, a more  
general language is important.

R can get us to one place. Ruby can get us anywhere, a bit slower(?).  
If we’re not positive where we’re going, then Ruby is a good idea.

I have nothing against R, but it’s not true that being better at  
particular tasks always, or even usually, wins. Even if Ruby is not  
the best at _any_ particular tasks it could still frequently be the  
best choice for projects.

– Elliot T.

> **[Curiosity Blog – Elliot Temple](https://www.curi.us/blog/)**
>
> A philosophy blog

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 10:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/7 "2006-07-04T22:06:11Z")

</div>

On 7/4/06, Matthew S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> things I use Prolog for.  
> seems a little wishy-washy) doesn’t get you anywhere. Being better  
> at particular tasks is what wins.

I’ve never used R however I’m sure it’s just great for statistics and  
perhaps some other mathemtaical operations. I’m all for using the  
right tool for the right job and all that…

However, having some experience with creating DSLs for describing and  
simulating quantum circuits [QDL] and for RTL/behavioral level  
description/simulation [RHDL], Ihave the suspicion that Ruby is  
flexible enough such that we could create some domain specific  
languages with it (where the domains can be science and math). It  
would be cool to create several little specialized languages in Ruby  
so that we could have the ‘best of both worlds’ - good for specialized  
domains while also being good at solving general propgramming  
problems. One can imagine that we could create a specialized language  
using Ruby that could be every bit as useful as R for statistics, for  
example.

Also, one can imagine that we could perhaps create something very new  
given Ruby’s strengths right now (Rails and web programming in  
general): The web-enabled research paper. When I was working on my  
master’s thesis I kept thinking that it would be great if I could not  
only read the reference papers, but also access their experimental  
data seamlessly. And perhaps not only the data , but also the  
programs used to generate that data. What if graphs in a web-enabled  
research paper were not just graphs, but you could also ‘push-into’  
them and access the underlying data? It would make it easy to then  
compare data from other research in your own paper. crazy idea?  
Couldn’t a mashup of web programming and sci-research-languages lead  
to a new level of collaboration?

For example: my master’s thesis is up on the web in a pdf. A couple  
of weeks ago someone doing similar research sent me some questions  
about it and asked for more info. What if instead of a static pdf, my  
thesis was a web app? The person who was sending the inquiry could  
have clicked on the graph in question and downloaded the data used to  
create the graph as well as the program used to create the data. They  
could have then gone on to modify the algorithm used in the program  
somewhat to test their theory and then ‘publish’ the results back to  
the web app (or perhaps post their own web app). Maybe it would work  
something like a wiki so that the research continues to grow on one  
site? That could certainly lead to a new level of collaboration.

…just brainstorming…

Phil

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2006, 5:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97063/8 "2006-07-05T05:31:19Z")

</div>

Elliot T. wrote:

> For small, well-defined problems that won’t change, a specialised  
> language is best, if there is an appropriate one.
> 
> For large, well-defined specialised problems that won’t change, a  
> specialised language is best.  
> Yes … as I noted in an earlier post, C did not manage to displace  
> either FORTRAN or Lisp. Both FORTRAN and Lisp are in a sense general  
> purpose, but they got “tuned” for specific application areas – number  
> crunching for FORTRAN and AI for Lisp. And the only languages that have  
> risen up since C that have given it a serious challenge are the  
> scripting languages Perl, Python and Ruby, and to a lesser extent Java.  
> For most projects, we don’t know if the specs will change, if we even  
> have detailed specs in the first place. In this case when it’s  
> important to be able to deal with unpredictable challenges, a more  
> general language is important.  
> Agreed … though I suspect something very much higher level than a  
> “typical” programming language is really what’s required for this type  
> of project. UML, for example, or the new tools that are starting to come  
> along based on the “PI Calculus”.  
> R can get us to one place. Ruby can get us anywhere, a bit slower(?).  
> If we’re not positive where we’re going, then Ruby is a good idea.  
> Hmmm … was it the caterpillar or the Cheshire cat who told Alice,  
> “Well, if you don’t know where you want to go, any road will take you  
> there?”

–  
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

> **[世界杯竞猜彩票-世界杯官网竞猜（集团）有限公司](http://www.linuxcapacityplanning.com/)**
>
> 世界杯竞猜彩票一直以来遵守商业道德，世界杯官网竞猜坚持诚信为本，保证诚实经营。世界杯竞猜彩票先后成为安徽省电子商务协会理事单位、安徽省网商协会会员单位、合肥市电子商务协会理事单位、合肥市服务外包行业协会会员单位、安徽省云计算产业促进会会员单位。世界杯官网竞猜一直保持良好的技术及服务态度，更好地为客户服务。