From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-04-05T07:22:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Some General Questions about Ruby

On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 06:29:43AM +0900, Brian Candler wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 05:22:00AM +0900, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > About the possibilities of Ruby, i know Ruby is a generic language, and
> > > that we can program almost every software in Ruby, but *almost* every
> > > for example, is it possible to develop a peripheral driver in Ruby ??
> > > more generally to access the hardware ? to write a linux kernel module
> > > ?? ( i guess it is not possible to write a ruby OS kernel )
> > 
> > I'd recommend against writing hardware drivers in Ruby, generally
> > speaking, though I imagine it's possible.  Writing an OS kernel might
> > prove a bit more difficult, with the interpreter-only implementation(s)
> > currently available.  For that sort of thing, you probably want to stick
> > to something like C, OCaml, or maybe even Haskell or compiled Lisp.
> > Ruby (and even Perl) is a bit less practical for such purposes.
> 
> Although there are specific places where userland programs are intended to
> hook into the kernel, and Ruby is fine for such things. For example, using
> ruby fusefs you can write your own filesystem in Ruby.
> http://rubyforge.org/projects/fusefs/

Agreed.  I didn't mean to suggest that you shouldn't interact with the
kernel with Ruby -- just that it's usually not the best language for
interacting directly with hardware and writing low-level stuff like
most Linux kernel modules (for instance).

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do." - McCloctnick the Lucid