From: bruno modulix <onurb@...>
Date: 2004-07-05T01:47:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Why I don't use Ruby.

TLOlczyk a �crit :
(snip)
> 
> Let us as an example look at a program that looks at a directory of
> Web pages, and traces through them. If it cannot find a link to a
> certain page, then it creates a link on a page in a prescribed manner.
> 
> You've written the program and tested it on a small data set.
> Now you want to test it on a large data set. It fails miserably 
> and you try to debug.
> Phase one of the program gets a list of all the files in the directory
> ( recursively ).
> Phase two is to scan the root files for hrefs. Then scan the files in
> the hrefs. Then ... untill there are no more files to scan.
> Phase three is to pick some file you didn't reach and create a link to
> it.
> 
> So you work on Phase one and get it to run.
> Then you work on Phase two. But it takes Phase one
> ten minutes to run. So each time you test a fix in phase two
> it takes at least ten minutes to run.
> 
> So you save an image at the end of phase one. 

What you have to save here is "a list of all the files in the 
directory"... Which is quite easy to write to/read from file, be it by 
serialization (ie : marshaling) or in a flat or structured text format - 
which is amazingly easy with langages like Ruby.

Having played with 'image-based' systems, I can well understand why you 
like it, but your example may not be that good... !-)

Bruno