# 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/97097>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 4, 2006, 9:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97097 "2006-07-04T21:16:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**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, 9:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97097/1 "2006-07-04T21:16:17Z")

</div>

Dear Ed,

> Gnuplot is just a  
> plotting engine, though, isn’t it? You still have to do the analysis in  
> some language, right?

That’s true except for simple things- but there are Ruby bindings  
available  
for it.

> Have you looked at Singular?

No, but I will. Thanks for the reference. I couldn’t find any bindings  
on  
the first page of Google results for “Singular Ruby”.  
kan/sm1 is open source and free. It’s part of OpenXM

\_[http://www.math.sci.kobe-u.ac.jp/OpenXM\_](http://www.math.sci.kobe-u.ac.jp/OpenXM_)  
([OpenXM (Open message eXchange for Mathematics)](http://www.math.sci.kobe-u.ac.jp/OpenXM)) .

Somewhere, they promise Ruby bindings for it, but these haven’t  
materialised  
for me so far ( maybe it’s a compiling problem though).

Maple and Mathematica aren’t free of course. When I am angry at their  
syntax  
I sometimes feel that software can be protected from potential users by  
making it commercial 🙂

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, 9:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-ed-borasky-and-his-second-favourite-programming-language/97097/2 "2006-07-04T21:29:10Z")

</div>

On Wed, 5 Jul 2006 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote:

> Maple and Mathematica aren’t free of course. When I am angry at their  
> syntax I sometimes feel that software can be protected from potential users  
> by making it commercial 🙂

that’s histerical - i feel exactly the same way about idl!

[http://www.ittvis.com/](http://www.ittvis.com/)

fortunately i’ve managed to wrap it in a generic way so i can  
transparently  
call it from ruby and my co-worker is writing most of the called  
routines.  
😉

-a