From: Zach Dennis <zdennis@...>
Date: 2004-09-16T03:59:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Ex-Perl coders: Howz it feel to convert to Ruby?


> I'm not a hardcore perl user. I learned perl and ruby at the same 
> time. After a few months I dropped Perl and went with Ruby. A coworker 
> of mine uses Perl a heck of a lot (and refuses to try 
> Ruby...ignorance..arghh) and we did a test one day. We both wrote a 
> script to parse out Flash ActionScript code. In one hour I was done 
> with the requirements we had came up with. About an hour later he was 
> finished. He even stated that my code looked cleaner then his, and 
> mine was about 60 lines less of code.  Although his code did run about 
> 4 seconds faster per 1000 files of about 200 lines of code.
>
> On another note I think that Perl coders like Perl because if they 
> have a specific problem they can write up a script start to finish 
> relatively quick to solve it. Where Perl lacks here is that if that 
> problem changes or evolves (which they often do) and the requirements 
> change, perl coders don't go refactor their code...they just start a 
> whole new script and rewrite it, which works for small scripts and 
> small problems, but not for larger ones. Perhaps this is how it should 
> be interpreted when you say "sounds like Ruby might be more suited to 
> "bigger" tasks and Perl to the small ones", because I would think more 
> Ruby programmers refactor their code instead of doing a rewrite 
> everytime a requirement changes. (Assuming that the requirement change 
> is a month or two or more after the initial script was written).
>
> Zach
>
 My assumption on Perl "coders" here is my experience with them. I am 
not trying to stereotype the whole perl world.

Zach