From: gabriele renzi <rff_rff@...>
Date: 2004-12-28T18:11:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Philosophy

Darren Crotchett ha scritto:

> Ruby.  I've been reading up on Ruby, a little.  I just bought the Programming 
> Ruby book.  It seems to be a lot like Smalltalk.  I'm thinking that I like it 
> better than Python because it seems a lot more consistent like Smalltalk.  
> But, then I question, if it is good because it is a lot like Smalltalk, why 
> not just use Smalltalk?  I'm sure there must be some good answers to this 
> question.  

just my two eurocents: I try to learn Smalltalk[0] from time to time, 
but It does not fit my mind perfectly, mainly due to three things.

First, I think Smalltalk is more predictable and more consistent than 
ruby, but, somewhat, I don't want that kind of consistency (i.e. 
#ifTrue: vs algol-like if).

The other point is the IDE integration/image based development. I can't 
feel good with it, and actually, I think I really felt comfortable just 
with GNU/Smalltalk because of the lack of a GUI environment(when I last 
tried.. I think they have one now). Notice this  is just me, I 
understand. We seem to get a lot of Smalltalkish stuff in ruby in this 
days (i.e. the breakpoint library somewhat feels like debug-and-continue)

Last, ruby has the 'scripting' thing, I mean, the ease of use for one 
liners and quick scripts, the coarse grained library and the general 
feel of "getting the job done". Just compare what Array in ruby does 
with all the collection classes in Smalltalk.[1]



> Also, is the Ruby community experiencing a lot of growth or what?  

I really think so, and I thing when the "Facets of Ruby" book series 
from the PragProgs will come out it will grow further :D

> TIA,
> Darren 

HTH.

[0] Avi, thanks for teaching me how to write it :)

[1] I'd love to have more mixins related to base classes in ruby (i.e. 
Map/Association, Stringish, Readable/Writable/Seekable,) they definitely 
do too much stuff becoming almost not-inheritable :/