From: "Michael T. Richter" Date: 2008-04-08T23:45:15+09:00 Subject: Re: RubyâEURO(tm)s not ready - an indepth essay --=-RBs97nwCpakulEdhxQzK Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=-rwdnY79QSCiH02PT0fqs" --=-rwdnY79QSCiH02PT0fqs Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 23:20 +0900, Diego Virasoro wrote: > However I did sympathise with the author's comment on having too many > ways to do the same thing. They pretty much mirror my feelings: that > you either learn them all (in which case you lost in simplicity) or > you'll have a very hard time reading other people's code. I admit > though that it makes _writing_ code easier. > I know however that the Ruby community is strongly in favour of this > "feature", so I was wondering why. You answered your own question here. It makes writing code a joy. And, unlike, say, Perl (or even more extremely, K), Ruby isn't quite a write-only programming language. (If you use all the idiot Perlisms you can make it that way, but almost nobody uses those thankfully!) Ruby is by no means a perfect language. But as a former Pythonista (I started with Python at v1.3), Ruby, despite its warts (and this includes the UNICODE issue, the lousy performance, the bad threading model and the whole host of other things people have ranted about for ages now) remains my first and favourite language I reach for when I'm starting a project. As things move along in the project I reach for other languages to supplement or replace it (recently Erlang has grabbed my imagination for certain key application elements), but Ruby's my first choice and is usually in the final product in some form or another. --=20 Michael T. Richter (GoogleTalk: ttmrichter@gmail.com) If there's one thing that computers do well, it's to make the same mistake uncountable times at inhuman speed. (Peter Coffee) --=-rwdnY79QSCiH02PT0fqs Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 23:20 +0900, Diego Virasoro wrote: 
However I did sympathise with the author's comment =
on having too many
ways to do the same thing. They pretty much mirror =
my feelings: that
you either learn them all (in which case you lost i=
n simplicity) or
you'll have a very hard time reading other people's=
 code. I admit
though that it makes _writing_ code easier.



I know however that the Ruby community is strongly =
in favour of this
"feature", so I was wondering why.

You answered your own question here.  It makes writing code a joy.&nbs= p; And, unlike, say, Perl (or even more extremely, K), Ruby isn't quite a w= rite-only programming language.  (If you use all the idiot Perlisms yo= u can make it that way, but almost nobody uses those thankfully!)

Ruby is by no means a perfect language.  But as a former Pythonista (I= started with Python at v1.3), Ruby, despite its warts (and this includes t= he UNICODE issue, the lousy performance, the bad threading model and the wh= ole host of other things people have ranted about for ages now) remains my = first and favourite language I reach for when I'm starting a project. = As things move along in the project I reach for other languages to supplem= ent or replace it (recently Erlang has grabbed my imagination for certain k= ey application elements), but Ruby's my first choice and is usually in the = final product in some form or another.

--
Michael T. Richter <ttmri= chter@gmail.com> (GoogleTalk: ttmrichter@gmail.com)
If there's one thing that computers do well, it's to make the same mista= ke uncountable times at inhuman speed. (Peter Coffee)
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