From: jeremy@... (Jeremy Henty)
Date: 2001-03-03T18:40:01+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:11928] Re: Negative Reviews for Ruby and ProgrammingRuby

In article <0G9B00D37JKHUY@mta6.snfc21.pbi.net>, Kevin Smith
 <sent@qualitycode.com> writes:

>I think people who love Python will often dislike (or at least be
>unimpressed with) Ruby. Perhaps that's the same with all three
>languages.

Maybe.  I've not yet fallen in love with any language, so I can't say.
I found Perl fantastically useful, but a PITA in many ways.  Tcl is
beautifully clean, but lacks first-class structures: another PITA.
Ruby is attractive because it combines Perl's usefulness with clean
and powerful foundations.  Is this love?

Perl is touted for the freedom it gives you.  I only just realised
this is not completely true: Perl doesn't allow you to use a clean
environment, because all the hacks and special-casing are built in at
the bottom.  So if they get in the way you have to write endless
code-arounds.  Ruby's approach seems to be: build a clean base, then
add the useful hacks and shortcuts as a layer on top.  Then the user
gets to choose what level to program at.  The regular expressions are
a good example: you have a neat, clean object-based mechanism with a
Perl-ish wrapper of useful global variables.  So if you need
quick-and-dirty, it's $n-frenzy, but if you can't risk messing with
the environment, you can use the objects.  Perl doesn't give you that
choice.

OK, this is wandering OT.  

>Probably better to pitch Ruby as an "alternative" rather than an
>"upgrade", if you know what I mean.

I think that was more or less my point.  

Cheers, 

Jeremy