From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2009-02-11T05:36:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby vs Perl performance

Igor Pirnovar wrote:
> David Masover wrote:
>   
>> I'm not trying to sell Perl's OO as the best thing, or 
>> even "better". But I'm defending it as inherently less 
>> useful than Ruby's. Someone might as easily say that 
>> Ruby's OO is inherently less useful than Java's, because 
>> Java does stricter (static) type-checking.
>>     
>
> It lacks so many 
> things that what you get by using it is redundancy and more work, the 
> things that good OO is trying to minimize if not eliminate.

Granted...

> what you call lack of type-checking can arguably be considered one of 
> Ruby's big advantages over those languages that have this feature.
>   

Yes, I realize this. However, you should also realize that both Perl and 
Javascript have a few similar features that make Ruby actually stricter 
than either. The examples I gave both revolve around the fact that in 
Perl and Javascript, functions (or subroutines) are just that. They can 
be used as methods, and thus related to an object or a class, but they 
are not inherently tied to that object.

In Ruby, however, I can't use a method from one class on a method from 
another class, unless the two classes are related. I also can't use a 
class as a module. In other words, it's the exact same sort of static 
type checking, protect-you-from-yourself mentality as Java.

> Strictly, from a pragmatical point of view, it makes much more sense 
> classifying objects based on what they can do rather than to which 
> "aristocracy" they belong.

Except that Ruby enforces the aristocracy with respect to which methods 
belong to which classes.

> It takes to much effort 
> in procedural languages to account for that which they lack!
>   

Except Perl is not strictly procedural, and Javascript actually has a 
very nice prototypal object system.