From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2005-10-24T08:15:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is Ruby a favorite among the Agile set?

I think it's because it meshes with agile development in so many ways. 
Many aspects of certain mainstream languages whose name may or may not 
start with 'J' are about providing 1. protection in a world without unit 
tests, 2. a means for BDUF, 3. a means to communicate the contract of a 
unit, and other things that are so very anti-agile.

Ruby eschews those things (static typing, interfaces, fine-grained 
security) -- not because they wouldn't be useful to some people -- but 
because they get in the way of beautiful code. It just so happens that 
they're also not useful to people doing XP, so I think that helped.

Ruby also provides other things that support agile. Frequent feedback 
and spiking through irb and no compile step. Simplicity through a large 
collection of semantics that allow you to choose the simplest tool for 
the job (i.e. blocks vs. callback interfaces).

Of course, it doesn't hurt that it's 1. majorly object-oriented, 2. got 
Rails, 3. devoid of EJB3.

IMHO,
Devin
*With the exception of really nice refactoring browsers.

Ed Howland wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I've heard/read that Ruby is a favorite language among the
>Agile/eXtreme Programming set and I am wondering why. [Disclaimer]
>this is for a project I am doing, so thanks in advance for any help.
>
>I do recognize the fact that Ruby lets you write very expressive
>programs making the principle of intentional programming easier. Also,
>there is not a lot of extraneous fluff to get in your way.
>
>But beyond that, why do XPers love it so much. Is it :
>
>Duck Typing
>Meta class programming
>Lisp like features (lambda - closures)
>Smalltalk like features
>Other?
>
>Thanks
>
>Ed
>
>Ed Howland
>
>
>  
>