From: Christopher Dicely Date: 2008-03-29T15:40:35+09:00 Subject: Re: What is Ruby's biggest strength ? On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 6:05 PM, 7stud -- wrote: > Marc Heiler wrote: > >> What helps Ruby stronger than other programming languages > > > > > These days, I would give the following reasons for ruby: > > > > > > - Extremely clean code compared to the other languages I know/look at. > > > > In my opinion that is a a lie perpetuated by the ruby community. I think its more of a matter of taste. One man's clean code is another man's Perl. :) > In my opinion, ruby syntax is ugly. Degustibus non est disputandum. > But even if you think the syntax is clean, ruby is all about cramming 4 or 5 function calls > into one line and sprinkling some regex's in for spice, which is creates an > indecipherable mess. While in Ruby you certainly can cram as many function calls as you can tolerate on a line, and sprinkle in as many regex's as you'd like, that's not what Ruby is all about. > I've never encountered any language that is coded so poorly by its community. Most of the > code I see posted is very hard to decipher, but if you say perl is worse, I'll believe you. Ruby can be hard to decipher coming from many other popular languages, as many use very similar (to each other) C-like syntax, and Ruby is both different in important ways and freer (optional parens, for instance) than most C-like languages. This isn't an issue of hygiene ("clean" code) so much as it is one of familiar syntax. TMTOWTDI also means that different programmer's will express things in the ways most natural to them, which may not be the most natural to other readers.