From: James Britt Date: 2004-07-03T01:00:34+09:00 Subject: Functional Ruby (Re: Why I don't use Ruby.) David Garamond wrote: > > As much as we like that to happen, Ruby is not for everyone. > > ... > + it's purely object-oriented (unlike Python & Perl), thus functional or > procedural guys might get offended or turned off. Um, I don't see this as true. Certainly one can write all the procedural code one likes in Ruby (I know *I've* managed to do it), and I believe the same is pretty much true for writing functional code. The numerous discussions here comparing Python and Ruby suggest that there is no reason one cannot do functional programming in Ruby at least to the same degree as one can in Python, if not more so. There are enough previous ruby-talk threads on Python vs. Ruby, so we don't need another one. But while there are numerous reasons people may find Ruby not to their taste, the idea that one is obligated to do OO programming, or held back from doing non-OO development, isn't one of them. One of the best things about Ruby is you can use OO modeling to get you most of the way through a program's design, then switch to functional or procedural techniques for the last mile. Or vice versa. See also: http://www.ping.de/~flori/ruby/programs/functional.html http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FunctionalProgrammingLanguages http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PythonVsRuby (look for the discussion on functional programming) > ... > I am guessing that Python will always be more popular than Ruby in > general, because the language is more acceptable to many people. That almost sounds like begging the question; Python's also more acceptable (to some) because it is more popular. Python may stay more popular because the differences between Ruby and Python are too subtle for most people to care (or too sophisticated for most people to understand), and Python (currently) has the edge on available libraries. James