From: Dan Sugalski <dan@...>
Date: 2001-12-31T10:28:42+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:29774] Re: Python and Ruby: a comparison

At 10:21 AM 12/31/2001 +0900, Michael Kelly wrote:
>On Sun, 30 Dec 2001 23:10:27 GMT, David Alan Black
><dblack@candle.superlink.net> wrote:
>
> >Let's say Ruby and Python merge.  At that point, someone who finds
> >deficiencies in that composite language (and there's no such thing as
> >a language in which nobody will find deficiencies, and there never
> >will be) decides to write a new language, which might borrow from the
> >Ruby/Python composite and from other languages but won't be identical
> >to any of them.
>
>Hmm, I wonder if it wouldn't be more productive
>to find some commonality on the back end.  Like
>maybe some "standardized" byte code so that
>you could code one module in Ruby, one in
>Python, one in Perl depending on what is best
>for the particular task.

Now there's an interesting idea... :)

>Maybe the syntax of
>the various scripting languages is too diverse
>to use all the modules from any client.. I dunno'.

Calling from one language to another isn't that big a deal--the language 
semantics are close enough to the same that for most things it won't really 
be an issue. There are a few places where the languages have some 
issues--assignment behaves differently, and the various taint/safe modes 
have mildly different semantics--but generally the languages all do the 
same things.


					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                      teddy bears get drunk