From: Tom Pollard <tomp@...>
Date: 2007-01-20T11:21:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and Python, questions (not a flamewar!)


On Jan 19, 2007, at 11:21 AM, Brad Tilley wrote:
> Quoting r <johnsyntax@yahoo.com>:
> Historically, software has been a product of the Western cultures.  
> The English
> language has greatly influenced every programming language.  
> Everything seems to
> originate from the C programming language (Python, Ruby, etc.) and  
> extend from
> there. C and Unix are a western concepts.

C and Unix are not concepts, but artifacts.   And, on the scale of  
computer science "history" (funny to use that to describe something  
that has arisen largely within the lifetime of many of the people  
reading this list) they're not extraordinarily old.  Many languages  
predated C (notably, Lisp and Fortran) and many of those old  
languages are still influential today.


> I find Ruby fascinating simply because it was written by a non- 
> western culture.
[...]
> We can examine many programming languages designed by western  
> software designers
> and clearly see the western way of problem solving, but  
> unfortunately, there are
> not very many popular programming languages designed by other  
> cultures. Ruby is
> one example of this and is very refreshing.

Well, Ruby was written by a /person/, not a culture, and it's largely  
a tasteful amalgam of good ideas introduced in those old "Western"  
languages.  I'd be interested to hear what you (or anyone else)  
thinks is distinctively non-Western about Ruby, as opposed to C or  
Lisp or Smalltalk.


Tom