From: George Jempty <jb4mt@...>
Date: 2002-01-13T05:06:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Why I think Ruby will eventually be more popular than Python

"Thomas Gandy" <gandy@techie.com> wrote in message
news:752891fc.0201121120.6b036764@posting.google.com...

> Not to say that Ruby is a messy hacker language - it's really quite
> clean and concise, very similar to Python really.  But Ruby allows you
> to do things like change the behavior of built-in types if you like,
> for example.

I'm a newbie, my first post was today, and I only have about 4 or 5 years IT
experience.  But I will say this is one of the reasons I am attracted to
Ruby: being able to change the behavior of built-in types.  So few people
know (or maybe they do know, but choose not to use) this, but you can do the
same with Javascript, with it's scheme-like prototype/inheritance.  A couple
of things I've done with Javascript, or plan to, are to add an 'isEmpty'
method to the built-in string type, and, a la OO Perl, an 'autoload' method
to the built-in function type (per the ECMA specification Javascript
functions serve as object constructors).

I've read up on OO, and flirted with it with Perl and Java, but I have made
the decision, as of 2002, to make Ruby my vehicle for finally delving into
OO in a major way.