From: "C. Dagnon" Date: 2009-05-13T01:47:24+09:00 Subject: Re: Any current preprocessor/Ruby language add-ons? Thanks for those links - it is interesting to me that they wanted to start design by contract for Ruby in 2001 but never got anywhere. Even their resources link to some DBC page instead forwards to buying one of their books (not about DBC). And the RubyForge project is by all accounts empty and inactive though it was founded in 2007. However the 2 articles you list last are definitely interesting. The second one especially gives me several ideas to mull over. Thank you! Why not move to Eiffel? Well if Eiffel is the only or best language using contracts I should be trying it if only to learn it's limitations. However I'd rather do incremental upgrades of all the existing Ruby/Rails products I've made than switch to a completely new language and web framework all at once. I would also like to bring this new level of reliability to new companies and projects who have finally started taking Ruby seriously or are willing to use it on the JRuby or related platforms. I've also never seen a job posting for Eiffel, but I haven't explored much. I also love the dynamic abilities of Ruby, and I want to keep them. However I want to be sure the code does what I want it to without needing me to exercise all the code separately. From the last article you gave, it sounds like Eiffel doesn't provide that feature - that the contracts are only enforced when the code is run, which would not meet my needs. It seems like if the contracts are defined the compiler/preprocessor should be able to guarantee all (at least small-scale) code interactions without writing any tests. Effectively swat all Unit and Functional tests without writing external, dependent code needing triggered updates. Except if that could be done, someone would have already done it, right? Which is partly why I was asking about other groups, meta-computer language groups in particular because I'm pretty fed up with limitations I've experienced in each of the existing languages I've tried. But I'm not experienced with the vernacular enough to know what the N-axis(es?) are of possible language/environment features. Wikipedia doesn't quite help either - their comparison has several useful points, yet doesn't quite compare their gestalts as I would like to. Perhaps because they want it to fit in thin tables? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages Lastly, I would love to see the assurance flexibility within the Ruby platform. Sometimes you need a script (easy with any Ruby), sometimes you need a 20+ person team working on a complex application (I don't see this as possible without major, strict development practices). The ability to tighten up an application from free-form script to (Eiffel-ness?) seems like a great growth vector for my usage patterns. We get both the immediate usefulness and the long-term maintainability. Thank you for continuing the conversation! -Chris -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.