From: Preston Crawford <me@...>
Date: 2005-01-22T18:55:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Reasons to consider learning Ruby?

On 2005-01-21, Stephan Kmper <Stephan.Kaemper@Schleswig-Holstein.de> wrote:
> Preston Crawford wrote:
>> So I'm wondering, for what reasons should I consider learning Ruby? I'm a 
>> "Big Book" type of guy. I love buying one of those tree-killers and diving 
>> into a new language. I'm trying to decide whether my next language to 
>
> It seems that the 'pickaxe' is for you. You can get it at: 
> http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/index.html
>
> It's up to date (covers Ruby 1.8.x) and really really well written.
> It has a 'tutorial style' part as well as a reference to the Ruby 
> standard library.

Picked this up tonight. Thanks for all the heads up, everyone!

>> learn will be Ruby or Python. I already know a bit about what makes Python 
>> good. So my question to you guys is, why Ruby? 
>
> These are my reasons:
> - The community is friendly, helpful and open minded
> - It's easy to learn
> - For me it works well on both 'unixoide' OSes and Windows
> - It's readable code with out much 'noise' (semicolons,
>    parentheses...)
> - It doesn't enforce one single program layout (indentation,
>    parentheses...)
> - There's 'test/unit', YAML, RedCloth, Rails (you mentioned it),
>    RDoc, ri and oh-so-many useful (and easy to use too) libs etc.
> - A lot of Design Patterns are 'built in' or easy to realize
>    (Visitor, Observer, Delegator...)
> - It's a very dynamic language
> - It's fun to work with
> - I get things done right in a short time (among other things
>    thanks to 'test/unit')
> - It fits my way of thinking

That all sounds good. Actually, what sold me was when I read that it 
helped some people understand OO better. Which I think is great. I've been 
doing Java for 3 years now. So I'm still Jr. level in Java. So it would be 
a nice side benefit if the language I learned for fun, also helped me to 
understand OOP better. Sometimes you can get bogged down in Java 
implementation and (especially if you don't have the time to stop and 
really spend learning the language inside and out) not have as good a 
handle on design patterns, etc.

>> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I 
>> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to 
>> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle 
>> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in 
>> this regard?
>
> Good question. I don't think Ruby will replace any of the 
> extremely-wide-spread languages any time soon. And I don't mind. In 
> fact, I think an extremely larger Ruby community would (at least) tend 
> to be less kind, less helpful and less responsive.

Maybe no. Anyway, thanks.

Preston