From: Benjohn Barnes <benjohn@...>
Date: 2006-03-23T08:27:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for [...] programmers


On 22 Mar 2006, at 22:29, Gregory Seidman wrote:

> I've said it before and I'll say it again. C++ has duck typing.  
> (It's in
> the templates.)

It's not Ruby's duck typing that makes me like it (I I agree with  
your templating point). It's Ruby's libraries, its clean and simple  
syntax, it's pre-installedness on OS X, the standard profiler,  
debugger, interactive shell, and documentation system that come out  
of the box. It's packaging system. I especially like irb - the shell.

> It just happens at compile time instead of run time. This
> has some significant advantages, not least of which is that the  
> compiler
> can do a lot of static analysis of your code, allowing it to catch  
> errors
> in code paths that runtime testing may not exercise.
>
> C++ is good for a different class of problems than Ruby but if you  
> don't
> think C++ is especially good for any purpose, or you even think  
> that C++ is
> exclusively OO, then you didn't really know C++ that well and you  
> didn't
> use it to its full potential.

:) I can only say I'm happy to have been spared that which I missed.