From: Conrad Schneiker <schneiker@...>
Date: 2000-02-14T23:26:32-06:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:01367] Scripting versus programming

For those of us who (to varying degrees) regard Ruby as in the same league
as Scheme and Smalltalk, except better (indeed better enough to bother
learning), calling Ruby a scripting language is somewhat-to-very misleading
(in effect, not in intent), despite whatever the strict definition of
scripting is. How many of you hear Scheme and Smalltalk described as
scripting languages? How many of you would normally describe them that way?

I recommend that we (and Ruby documentation) describe Ruby first and
foremost as "one of the world's most powerful programming languages", and
subsequently mention that is also enormously useful for scripting--if, when,
and where appropriate. This may (or probably should) sound trite to
technically astute people, many business/IT decisions at tens of thousands
of shops world-wide are unfortunately made on the basis of superficial
impressions.


YARC && TGIR,
Conrad


(Yet Another Ruby Convert(from Perl))
(Thank Goodness its Ruby)