From: Tobias Reif <tobiasreif@...>
Date: 2001-11-29T22:48:30+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26894] short article draft for review

Hi,

here is a draft for a very short article about Ruby. All in all I want 
to leave it like it is, but if you find major errata/bugs/issues, please 
post corrections/fixes. (or mail 'em offlist; it's probably not worth a 
big thread)

---------------------------------------

Ruby makes me feel good

Ruby is a very nice object-oriented programming language.
I'm amazed by it again and again, because it's simple, powerful,
fun, and magic. It's created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, and
the homepage is www.ruby-lang.org/en/ .
It's open source, and runs on many platforms, including
Linux and Windows.

Ruby is still young. On the one hand, this means that there aren't as
many libraries in place as there could; on the other hand, it means
that there's still much room to get involved.

Ruby is my first full programming language. I started with some
others before, but they didn't inspire me. With Ruby, I'm having fun.

One guy at ruby-talk (the main list) said many of the participants at
his Ruby workshop were smiling, instead of looking frustrated.
Others say, their thoughts flow directly into the code.

Sometimes I think: "I have a good idea how to implement this; I'll
do a quick outline, and work on it later." But in Ruby, there's not
much difference between high level pseudo code expressing the intentions,
and the actual code.
Many times, my Ruby programs surprise me: they run before I think
they could.

Ruby is a very high level language, featuring descriptive naming
among many other nice concepts; nice, readable,
and maintainable code can be written.

Here are just a few of the things I like about Ruby:

----------------------------------------

Easy to extend existing classes:

class Numeric
   def pos
     if self < 0
       0
     else
       self
     end
   end
end
puts  4.pos
puts  0.pos
puts -4.pos

# 4
# 0
# 0

----------------------------------------

Iterators:

for first in 1..2 do
   for second in 1..3 do
     puts first.to_s + '.' + second.to_s
   end
end

# 1.1
# 1.2
# 1.3
# 2.1
# 2.2
# 2.3

----------------------------------------

Recursion, blocks as arguments:

def upto limit,current=1,&block
   yield current
   if current < limit
     upto limit,current+=1,&block
   end
end

upto(2) do |integer|
   puts 'line' + integer.to_s
end

# line1
# line2

----------------------------------------

Objects:

class Digits_to_english < String
   def to_e
     self.scan(/\d/).map do |digit|
       case digit
         when '0' then 'zero'
         when '1' then 'one'
         when '2' then 'two'
         when '3' then 'three'
         when '4' then 'four'
         when '5' then 'five'
         when '6' then 'six'
         when '7' then 'seven'
         when '8' then 'eight'
         when '9' then 'nine'
       end
     end
   end
end

d2e = Digits_to_english.new '55793'
puts d2e
puts d2e.to_e

# 55793
# five
# five
# seven
# nine
# three

----------------------------------------

* Very high level
* Pure OO from the beginning
   OO skills are not required to get started.
* Easy to use:
   Simple stuff is simple, complex stuff isn't complicated.
* Interpreted: no need to compile.
   (That's how the current main implementation works;
   other models are thinkable)
* Allrounder:
   Good for serveside, GUI, commandline, distributed apps and more.
* Human oriented: One can be creative,
   instead of being intimidated by complexity.
* Elegant and expressive control structures:
   Readable and maintainable code is possible
* The principle of least surprise
   Many times, things work as expected.

On http://www.pinkjuice.com/howto/ I collected some links that were
helpful for me when I started.
There also is a howto about generating and serving SVG, featuring tips,
examples, and code. There are links to the Ruby interpreter, including
an easy Windows installer.
Also check:
The Pickaxe - A very good book
   http://www.rubycentral.com/book/
Ruby Book List
   http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyBookList
Ruby Documents
   http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/doc.html

go_to('www.ruby-lang.org').get(ruby).play.create.have_fun ;)

Tobi

---------------------------------------

Tobi

-- 
Tobias Reif
http://www.pinkjuice.com/myDigitalProfile.xhtml

go_to('www.ruby-lang.org').get(ruby).play.create.have_fun
http://www.pinkjuice.com/ruby/