From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-09-25T07:07:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Question about 2005 Ruby critique...

On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 06:50:09AM +0900, barcaroller wrote:
> I come from a C/C++/Perl background and I have been reading up on Ruby for a 
> while (no hands-on experience yet, except for a few tutorials).  Most of the 
> stuff sounds/looks very positive but I recently found this critique of the 
> Ruby language on the web and I was wondering whether these statements have 
> any validity at all.
> 
> 
> ========================================
> Ruby: better than Perl - but what isn't?
> ----------------------------------------

I think that line really says it all.  There's a *lot* of stuff that
isn't better than Perl.  Perl's a great language, especially within its
particular niches of choice.  Ruby is certainly better than Perl at some
things, and Perl is better than Ruby at others.  Both are better than
Python at some things.  Et cetera.

The so-called critique (more of an attempt at character assassination) is
filled with questionable value judgments without much value outside
personal preferences, presented as facts.  I don't think it requires much
addressing beyond pointing out the ridiculous assumptions embodied in
that headline.  Further indications that the author has no clue what
he/she is talking about include the implication that Perl doesn't support
closures, that Ruby's functional (read: no side effects) capabilities are
anathema to the language's core design philosophy, that side effects are
necessarily bad, and so on.

With such devastating exercises of logical rigor in making an argument as
"WTF???" and "Yuck," against which I have no defense, I feel I have been
bested on the field of honor.  I shall now withdraw.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Patrick J. LoPresti: "Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1)
Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk
quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!"