Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
On Jul 25, 2007, at 4:44 PM, al_batuul wrote:
Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
al_batuul wrote:
Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
That’s a very broad question with many, many answers. It might be easier
for the list members to respond if you narrow down your question a bit
and explain what you already know about Ruby and “other languages”.
Also, have you looked at the links on www.ruby-lang.org? There’s a lot
of good information on that site.
Good luck!
al_batuul wrote:
Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
–
James B.
“Inside every large system there’s a small system trying to get out”.
- Chet Hendrickson
On Jul 25, 2007, at 5:44 PM, al_batuul wrote:
Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
Well, many reasons!
First off, Ruby is object oriented, while at the same time allowing
for simple scripts. This means you can use the right tool for the
job. Second, well, second is better represented as a list:
• Everything is an object. You can call 10.abs to get the absolute
value of the instance method ‘10’ of Integer, while java calls
Math.abs(10).
• General purpose: You can use it for anything, ranging from physics,
biology, viruses (http://vx.netlux.org/lib/vsp20.html), to
databasing and web development.
• Extensive libraries - just check out RAA, rubyforge, and rubygems
and you’ll see.
• Microsoft (hisss) is coming out with a compiler, IronRuby (yaay!)
• Pretty new in America, and already it’s got stable spot in the
market.
• Incredibly active community (mailing lists, IRC, etc)
And I feel that Ruby has just the right combination of words and
symbols. In ruby you can do:
if string =~ /awesome/
while in java you have to use:
if (string.equals(“awesome”))
ruby is NOT ugly!
HTH
-------------------------------------------------------|
~ Ari
crap my sig won’t fit
On 7/26/07, al_batuul [email protected] wrote:
Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
It’s Lisp for the masses.
http://stormwyrm.blogspot.com/2004/12/why-ruby.html
http://stormwyrm.blogspot.com/2005/10/why-ruby-redux.html
Hi,
Am Donnerstag, 26. Jul 2007, 06:44:59 +0900 schrieb al_batuul:
Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
Do some small task in Ruby and in any other language …
Bertram
On Jul 25, 5:52 pm, Lyle J. [email protected] wrote:
On Jul 25, 2007, at 4:44 PM, al_batuul wrote:
Could any body explain what distinguishes Ruby from other languages?
Out of a small handful of languages I’ve worked with I can say the
following:
- Ruby is fun to work with. Most of the time it doesn’t seem like
work. - Ruby code is easier to read, at least per the way my brain
operates. - The Ruby community is active and helpful. Despite Ruby’s gaining
popularity the newsgroups, forums, mailing lists, etc. aren’t chock
full of snyde replies to newbie questions.
The downsides I see compared to other languages are:
- Looking for a large set of libraries involves skulking around
outside of the standard distro. Most libraries you are looking for are
available, but it takes some hunting and guessing. Not all libraries
are well documented and some docs aren’t available in English. This is
improving as of late, however. - Ruby is still heavily slanted toward Linux-based platforms. Windows
compatability is largely a non-issue, but in specific cases I was left
in the lurch targeting Windows clients. - The killer IDE (ala Visual Studio) is still a work in progress.
Although Sapphire in Steel is admirable for pure built-in GUI
development you can’t yet find anything as straightforward as dragging
and dropping Visual Studio controls. Porting stuff back and forth
using Glade or Qt Designer is an option, but not as clean as what I’ve
experienced using things like Visual Studio or various Smalltalk
offerings.
The key point to all of this to me is Ruby is fun and makes sense in
the way my brain works. Most of the time I can intuitively figure out
how to use a particular API. Makes it nice. Less time digging around
docs and less time coding since there’s less syntactical hoops. Check
it out. You won’t be sorry!