From: darren <rubylang@...>
Date: 2004-12-29T12:32:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Philosophy

On Tuesday 28 December 2004 3:46 am, Stefan Schmiedl wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 17:02:21 +0900,
[ . . . snip . . . ]
> Ruby feels like Smalltalk without IDE. To make up for that loss, you get
> regular expressions. If you liked Smalltalk, you'll like Ruby. If you
> liked the Unix-approach to things, too, you'll love Ruby.
>

I prefer Unix.  I like what I see, so far.  I was just trying to get a feel 
for the intangible.

> Python started non-OO and still carries this burden with it. Ruby OTOH
> was OO from the beginning.
>
> > 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.
>
> You can do lots of things within the Smalltalk environment, in a very
> natural and consistent way. It's a little bit harder if you have to
> interface to the different philosophy behind OSes like Unix, where
> everything is not an object, but a (text) file.
>
> Ruby is well suited for such file-based environments. You won't have the
> natural persistence that ST objects show within a saved image. But this
> can be both curse and blessing.
>
> > Also, is the Ruby community experiencing a lot of growth or what?
>
> steady growth ...
> s.

Darren