From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2000-06-13T14:53:20+01:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:03360] Re: Selling Rubies by the Carat

Where I heard about it?  One of the language lists on the web, or
when browsing for Perl information I found references to Ruby as a
"successor" to Perl.  This was some time back, a vague memory suggests
that this was when ruby was at 0.8 or thereabouts.  I did not pursue
it then as I thought it would be too likely to change.

Why I moved to it?  I tried to develop some sockets code. I wanted a
more flexible system for development and test than C++ and knew that
Perl had sockets in it.  However, there are now two sockets libraries
in Perl, and I could not find clear documentation on how to use UDP
with Perl and one library only.  Also, although I had learned Python
and have written some useful things in it, I ended up looking for the
newer ruby stuff first, and found it had a sockets library that was
usable.

I found the OO code in Ruby clearer to read than Perl's.  Also, earlier
in my code development I found that fact that you could not just extend
the Dictionary class in Python, but had to use "contains" rather than
"inherits" to go further, rather irritating.

Hope this helps.
	Hugh
	hgs@dmu.ac.uk