From: Rick Nooner <rick@...>
Date: 2005-09-23T05:45:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Large Ruby Apps ?

On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 04:51:40AM +0900, Isaac Gouy wrote:
> Austin Ziegler wrote:
> > On 9/22/05, Isaac Gouy <igouy@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Ara.T.Howard wrote:
> > > -snip-
> > > > line one is an error.
> > > > line two core dumps.
> > > > line three will hang your machine.
> > >
> > > Humbly suggest that C is not the poster child for static type checking
> > > :-)
> > > iirc C is not even considered to be type safe.
> >
> > Humbly suggest that the same applies to Java (java.lang.Object,
> > anyone?), C++, and even C#. The only type safe statically checked
> > language that I've used is Ada.
> >
> > C is statically checked and weakly typed. Ara's point remains the same
> > -- the compiler doesn't complain about these very *obvious*
> > programming errors.
> >
> > -austin
> > --
> > Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
> >                * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca
> 
> 
> I'm not interested in quarreling about the meaning of phrases, so I use
> textbook definitions - for "type safety" and "strong typing" see p271
> "Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation"
> http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Books/ProgLangs/
> 
> Java is considered type safe; C++ (because of the C subset) is not.
> 
> Ara make's a good point about C, which doesn't generalize to other
> statically type checked languages.
> 

I also think that if strong type checking is important to you, you should
use a language that does it well.  Look at OCaml or Haskell.

I think you'll find that Ruby is more practical and you'll get more real
work done with it than most other languages.

Ara's earlier comment about tloc vs. bugs regardless of the language is
very relevant.  Many of the systems that I've written in Ruby, while
between 5,000 to 10,000 lines of code each, correspond to 50,000 to 100,000
lines of code in C++ or even Java.  Not only is my development time
cut to a 10th but so is my debugging time.  I think that it's telling that
I've never had to start a debugger on my Ruby code.  That certainly isn't
the case with my C/C++ or Java code.

Oh, and I've been writing large C systems since the mid 80's.

Another reason that I'm able to use Ruby where I work is that I don't have
to have a multi-man, multi-month or multi-year project for things that I
used to.  There are two people on my team.  This saves the company money in
more than one way.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for such projects, just that languages
like Ruby have lowered the barrier such that many projects don't have to be
large anymore.

Rick

-- 
Rick Nooner
rick@nooner.net
http://www.nooner.net