From: Phlip <phlip_cpp@...>
Date: 2005-04-02T13:09:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Getting Ruby approved

leon breedt wrote:

> Perl's XS is arcane, inconsistent and easy to cause segfaults in.
> You're never quite sure when you should or should not reference
> something in Perl, for example. They've invented concepts for the
> hacks you have to do to work around the crap architecture of the
> system. Its far too low-level. Extension documentation is all over the
> place, in disparate man pages, and requires reading of *all* of them
> and understanding *all* of them to get something to build and run
> reliably. Ruby is infinitely better than Perl in this regard.
>
> I haven't much experience with Python extensions, although, Pyrex
> looks like it makes Python extensions quite painless.

I have extended Python. It's about mid-way between Perl and Ruby. The
extension libs, such as Boost's C++ Python wrapper, make it relatively
painless.

Ruby just _starts_ in the painless zone, despite using pure C.

Click here:

    http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?BroadbandFeedback

That shows a Wiki written in Ruby hosting test cases written in XML
containing Ruby sample code. The tester pushes the code into a C++ Qt
application built to respond to a suite of Ruby commands to draw fractals.
(Without the tests, you can write the Ruby directly into the Qt interface.)

The tester takes screenshots of Qt's OpenGL widget rendering the fractals,
and the Wiki renders these.

All of that works with tiny snips of _exemplary_ Ruby and C bonding, without
any excessive adapter layer.

-- 
  Phlip
  http://industrialxp.org/community/bin/view/Main/TestFirstUserInterfaces