From: Paul Prescod <paulp@...>
Date: 2001-10-26T10:05:29+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23387] Re: Bruce Eckel's opinion of Ruby

Just a few factual observations.

Eric Lee Green wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> 9. Reference counting (Python) is more memory-efficient than garbage
> collection (Ruby), since it frees up memory as references are destroyed
> rather than waiting until a garbage collector runs. Python does need a
> garbage collector to collect circularly-referenced objects though, so
> Python's lack of garbage collection overhead has to be offset by the fact
> that circular references currently hang around forever.

That hasn't been true for about a year or so.

>...
> 11. Iterators (Ruby) are good stuff.

Python 2.2 has iterators and generators.

>... It also makes a
> superior language for prototyping Java applications, since many aspects
> (iterators, rinda, single inheritance only, etc.) are similar to Java. 

I'm surprised to hear you say that. I would have thought that Python is
a much better match for Java because you can code in Jython and then
port bits over to Java incrementally. Python 2.2 has iterators, and may
well have "rinda" (whatever that is!). Restricting yourself to single
inheritance is not brain surgery if you know you are going to Java. You
have to restrict yourself considerably in either language if you intend
to port to Java because of the static type checking and lack of
genericity.

 Paul Prescod