From: Phlip <phlip_cpp@...>
Date: 2001-10-19T05:04:37+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:22722] Re: Some general questions about Ruby

Axel.Vanhooren wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I just started learning Ruby.. and the book didn't
> lie about it.. Ruby seems to be really funny to work with.
> But I have a few questions about Ruby.

Being tutorial-style questions, we suggest you write a page on the Wiki
at www.rubygarden.com about the answers. (A Wiki is a Web site anyone
can edit.)

> How stable is Ruby ?

I have done >nasty< things to it and have not encountered a bug or
crashed the interpreter. Others might have stories, though.

Remember that on a visible-source project getting a bug fixed is MUCH
easier than on a closed-source project, like Visual C++. Bugs I
encountered 6 years ago there are still not fixed!

> In the book they said that Ruby can have some performance
> problems. How much is it ?

Ruby is interpreted. This does not just mean that the interpreter reads
the source every single time it executes. It means that the language
supports abilities, such as typeless run-time binding and reflection,
that >require< it to behave like an interpreted language, even if you
compiled it.

But programs tend to have two parts; a high-level command-n-control part
that distributes orders, and low-level libraries that carry-out the
orders. Libraries that must be fast, such as PNG file decoders,
typically already have other reasons to be written in a fully compiled
language. The primary reason is you can share them between applications.

Command-n-control is light.

Finally, well-written code consists of many small functions which are
easy to time, test, and refactor. Code that has survived many automated
unit tests, and which has been refactored often, tends to reduce to the
minimum line count between two points. Optimal. This is essentially the
only reason a slow language like Smalltalk could ever have been used to
invent windowing user interfaces on 1 megahertz CPUs.

> Does a Ruby compiler exists ?

I downloaded rb2c but I have not tried it yet.

> Will Ruby be extended with it's own GUI-library ?

Java's success as a "language bundled with a GUI" should not be taken as
a sign that languages must bundle GUIs. Java merely filled an enormous
power vacuum in the early Web industry.

We should, instead, seek powerful cross-platform GUIs that can be driven
by a number of scripting languages. Not least of these is tk, the
back-end of TCL/Tk. Most scripting languages can use it. There are also
Gtk, wxWindows, FLTK, FOX, etc., but I'm not sure which are Rubied,
though.

-- 
Phlip

http://www.greencheese.org/HatTrick