From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2005-08-03T02:01:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Factors to consider for choosing Ruby?

In article <1122967180.462776.134970@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
francisrammeloo@hotmail.com <francisrammeloo@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>At work I have received an assignment where I have to parse textfiles
>containing textual description of user interfaces and generate C++ code
>to create the GUI.
>I decided to try out Ruby for this job and I never regretted. It does
>an excellent job parsing the textfiles. This is the first program I'm
>doing in Ruby and I've already fallen in love :)

Ahhh, another Ruby-smitten programmer.  Welcome!

>
>Now I'd like to use Ruby more in the future and I wonder how wide the
>scope of Ruby is? Ruby has proven to be an ultimate candidate for
>textual problems and I'd like to know if it's useful in writing larger
>applications.
>
>Currently I program mostly in C++ because I can do anything with it.
>I'd like to do more in Ruby.
>
>When should I choose Ruby? When should I stick to C++?

Use Ruby for programs you need to get done quickly and where performance 
isn't an issue.

Use C++ for programs that need to run fast with schedule being less of an 
issue.

You can mix to two as well and use C++ for the fast bits and Ruby for 
everything else.  You can even define classes that have some methods 
defined in C++ (for performance reasons) and others defined in Ruby. Look 
into Swig (http://swig.org) for wrapping existing C++ code.


You'll probably find that you can implement 80% of your functionality in 
Ruby and 20% in C++.


That said, though, I used to be rather negative about C++, but now with a 
lot of the newer template programming techniques (check out the C++ 
Templates book or the one on template metaprogramming) as well as the 
advent of the Boost libraries I'm finding my forays into C++ interesting 
again. 


Phil