From: Bil Kleb <W.L.Kleb@...>
Date: 2001-11-13T13:27:49+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:24982] Re: Linux Magazine article

Dave Thomas wrote:
> 
> Andy & I've been asked to write a feature article about Ruby for Linux
> Magazine (www.linux-mag.com).
> 
> I want to make this an upbeat article, featuring Ruby's strengths, and
> not other language's weaknesses. So, a quick poll request: what
> features of Ruby do you think would most impress or excite someone who
> hasn't used the language yet?

Something that might appeal to the linux cluster administration readership:
the difference between a single thread Ruby code and multi-threaded one is
typically only four lines:

threads=[]
threads << Thread.new do |aThread|
 [..previously serial stuff..]
end
threads.each {|aThread| aThread.join}

I use such a script to ping all the nodes on our 48- and 56-node linux
clusters.  Before I took the five minutes(!) to learn how to use Ruby's
threading capability I was constantly frustrated by the time it took
to do this simple task.

Not even a system administrator,
--
bil <http://abweb.larc.nasa.gov/~kleb/> (currently blocked)