From: Louis J Scoras Date: 2006-06-10T03:37:58+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby's role in future operating systems On 6/9/06, James Britt wrote: > > Question (maybe a bit off-topic): > > The example may be quick, but in what way is it dirty? It is "quick and dirty" in that it is an incomplete solution in-so-far as converting between the two formats in the most general sense. That is, if one were to stick that line into a file, chmod +x mp32ogg, it wouldn't be very featureful (setting bit rates, meta information, et cetera). Then again, the whole point is the flexibility of using two or more programs in all sorts of original and interesting ways. If all I want is to change the encoding, the above suffices admirably. There's no reason that extra options couldn't be specified either. > More generally, why do those two words get used as if they were joined > at the hip? Is there a bias against being quick, a belief quick only > comes at the cost of clean code? I think I used that phrase because for as much as I hate them, I am weak and easily fall into the temptation of using cliches *smirks.* > This "quick and dirty" dismissal comes up fairly often when describing > Ruby to the skeptical ("Well, Ruby may be good for quickandirty scripts, > but ..." ). > > My usual response is that I prefer quick and dirty to slow and dirty; > Java or C# (the usual suggested alternatives for "real" programming) > offer no more assurance of clean code than using Ruby; indeed, the > opposite is likely more the case. > I totally agree; don't get me wrong. I gave the example as a positive one. When presented with a problem, the first thing I often try is to see if I can't pull a solution right on the command line. -- Lou.