[ruby-talk:23110] Re: Bruce Eckel's opinion of Ruby

On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Emiliano wrote:

> The difference being that people that think like this about riding
> motorcycles most prabably haven't actually tried riding one. Bruce
> Eckel certainly does know a thing or two about OO.
>
Agreed, but...

> Dismissing an opinion or observation is easy. Learning from it is hard
> but beneficial in the long run.
>
I don't think Matz dismissed the opinion of Eckel and it wasn't my
intention to do so either. On the contrary I think matz comment was more
along the lines of "love, peace and understanding".

When I "took on" Eckel's comments some notes were (this is long and rather
boring, you might want to skip it):

"Also note that I've looked at a fair number of languages, and learned
some of them in depth, so I like to think I know what I'm looking for). "

Fair enough, but he is probably also aware of the fact that he is
influential. So it is not only about what he wants but partly also about
"what an OO developer in general" wants and if he fails to act from such
understanding of his influence he is taking part in some kind of
We-better-than-you-simply-because game. Unless his comments are truly
objective.

"IMO, the Ruby syntax is worse and often annoying to me, based on my
knowledge of other languages and especially Python."

Ok, not for me.

From this I learn that if you come to Ruby (or antoher language) from a
similar language with a different syntax you might not like what you
see. Probably because you have to translate into the mental model based on
concepts from your original comments. Not sure how general this is or if
its what is really happening here. But it might be worse the closer the
languages are.

"Ruby requires more typing for no particular reason, "

This can be tested and I doubt that it is true. From the little Python
experience I have I think it is the other way around. Ok, we have more
"end" stuff but they have "self" etc.

"and has an uninspired choice of syntax in many cases "

I don't understand what he means. Someone with Eckel-like programming
experience (ie. long and with many languages) do?

"Plus Python has 10 years behind it and a big, very smart, very active
community, a nice number of good books and more on the way, a large set of
libraries and a whole process and team in place for developing the
language. "

Ok, here are some objectively testable statements. He seem to be right
that there is a real difference:

Ruby has 8 years. The community is smaller and less "active". There are
more books on the way although I don't know if they're good (well one is
but... ;-)). The set of libraries is smaller. There is a "process". Maybe
Matz is more of a single leader/developer than is Guido; I don't know.

"Recent improvements to the language have outstripped whatever Ruby could
offer, I think, and there's currently lots of very good work going on to
further improve Python."

Ok, this sounds interesting. Could someone point to the recent
improvements that have outstripped whatever Ruby could offer? I note that
he says "could offer" which seems to be a pretty bold statement. I doubt
that it is true. There is currently good work on improving Ruby also.

"FWIW, I usually find that this question is asked by someone who is
considering learning to program, and was snagged by the fact that Ruby is
new, and perhaps thinks that it's going to be the next great thing like
Java. From everything I can see, it's not. For some reason, the creator of
the language saw Python and decided to do a clone, and people who had
never used Python thought it was a good idea. Harsh, maybe, but that's my
impression: if you've used Python at all, you wouldn't give Ruby a second
glance."

My feeling is that there are quite a few experienced programmers coming to
Ruby but I may be wrong. I doubt Matz have conssciously ripped off Python.

Eckel's comments about the productivity treshold seems to imply he
is doing a going-from-python-to-ruby analysis. Seems his conclusions are
reasonable from that viewpoint.

Regards,

Robert