From: "Shot (Piotr Szotkowski)" <shot@...>
Date: 2009-05-16T20:28:09+09:00
Subject: Re: what could be improved in Ruby for Science?

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Joshua Ballanco:

> I have a sneaky suspicion that Ruby is being much more widely used
> in Science than you might guess based just on forum posts and Google=20
> searches. I think the biggest difference between science in Python
> and science in Ruby is the sharing. For example, I'm using Ruby for=20
> some evolutionary modeling for my Ph.D. thesis. I've thought about=20
> library-izing some of the code, but that's extra effort. In other=20
> words, it seems like Ruby is almost "too good" in that it lets you
> do really rapid development of experimental code without the need
> to first write entire libraries. The first step in building a better=20
> science-ruby community is remembering to share.

Hear, hear. I use Ruby for my PhD as well (functional decomposition
of FSMs for implementation in FPGAs), and am just rewriting=C2=B9 my first=
=20
version from scratch (targetting Ruby 1.9 along the way). I do try to=20
have a fat library with just a thin =E2=80=98executable=E2=80=99 around it,=
 but getting
it working first is more important than getting it reusable outright
(I also don=E2=80=99t see that much use for it outside of my PhD, but I mig=
ht
be wrong here).

=C2=B9 http://github.com/Chastell/art-decomp

> In that respect, let me be the first to post a link to=20
> http://sciruby.codeforpeople.com/, although it seems to
> be down (paging Dr. Howard?).

Sadly, there also aren=E2=80=99t any files at the relevant RubyForge page.

=E2=80=94 Shot
--=20
Clojure Creator Admits Unfortunate Spelling
Error in Original Whitepaper [patentlyfalse]

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