From: David Tillman Date: 2001-10-27T04:37:02+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:23499] Re: Ruby and Python: a fuzzy question > I agree with this. And I just now curious what was the first language > you guys learned? In timeline order: o BASIC with pencil, paper, and a book from the Library. o BASIC on a Commodore VIC-20. o BASIC on an Apple ][. o Machine code on the 6808 and 6809. Yes, machine code, I didn't have an assembler. o Assembler on the 6502. o C (Borland Turbo C - Woo Hoo!) o C++ o Assembler on the 68HC11. o Visual Basic - a dark time of my life that I would rather forget... o PERL. Wow, now I could actually get stuff done. o Assembler (of sorts) on the Microchip PIC. o LISP - this was a real turning point in programming philosophy for me. I learned LISP after Jamie Zawinski threatened to stomp out my guts and eat them if I added any features to BBDB in PERL. o Scheme. I finally reached true enlightenment. I could lose the huge footprint of LISP. Elegant. Clean. No more 3000 line PERL scripts. STk, Guile, MzScheme, SCSH, Elk... I loved them all... o Pike and Python. After writing thousands of lines of clean, beautiful, Scheme code I realized that I was having to write too many library functions (reinventing the wheel). Established librarys are a good thing. o Ruby. Python reminded me too much of PERL wearing a lab coat. It simply doesn't strike me as orthogonal enough. In Ruby I have found what I feel is a good balance between elegance and power. (I still tend to code a lot of stuff in Scheme - and XLISP-STAT is great) -- How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.