From: Bob Calco <rcalco@...>
Date: 2001-11-27T05:38:11+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26551] Re: Ruby vs. Python: Decisions, Decisions

Ralph:

> Initialy I used RubyWin, but after not very long I found that not as good
as
> perhaps it should be.  Now I am using IRB from am cmd session and SciTE
for
> general edit / run. It works well, but all things considered I would still
> like an IDE.  And no matter what people want to say about unit testing it
> would save time.

RubyWin needs a lot of work to be anything like PythonWin. But I find myself
using IDLE mostly, or my Multi-Edit 9 program and the command line, for
Python coding. Less overhead, sufficient functionality for whipping up my
scripts quickly.

SciTE is a Scintilla editor, or what? I don't have it, but I've heard of it
in the Python world. The Pythonistas are really good about integrating
Python with everything anybody can think of, an admirable pioneering
quality.

> Compiling ruby with VC++ is easy, as is doing extensions in VC++. See the
> readme in the win32 directory. For me one of the nice things is that
> everything *hasn't* already been written! There's plenty of interesting
> projects out there.

That is a good point. All of Ruby's limitations that I can see do not appear
related to the language or interpreter, per se, just stuff that's missing or
not as robust as it should be.

> I have been working with Win32ole and have also added the ability to
create
> com objects using ruby.  It's the easiest way I have found of creating com
> object thus far. I have some thoughts on using native interfaces in the
> future (all happens with IDisaptch at the moment).  However all things
> considered, untill there is a really good VM the IDispatch overhead is
> probably much compairable to a standard ruby function call.

Let me know if you need help on COM stuff and integrating Ruby with MS
technology on Win32 in general. I'd like to help make its Win32 distribution
as good as Mark Hammond made Python's. Wanna collaborate on an O'Reilly
"Win32 Programming With Ruby" book? Why not? I know the Windows programming
part, and now that a few of my misconceptions have been cleared up about
extending it with MSVC, I feel fairly confident that such a book would be a
fun to write. Learn by doing. ;)

> There is a bit of a religious war going on about this one.  I am on the
VC++
> side, and I think it is going that way. To me it really opens up the pool
of
> professional window programmers.  One must remember however that ruby has
a
> UNIX background and they are as likely to want to use VC++ for it, as you
> are to want to use AutoConf , make and all those other tools that you
> probably know little about.

Well, I know some Unix, enough to be functional, but my daily bread is on
Windows, and that's where I need to get my solution working first. It is
nice to know, however, that much of it will port nicely to Unix when that
becomes necessary, as it will for some portions of the project, eventually.

Sincerely,

Bob