From: Charles Oliver Nutter <headius@...>
Date: 2010-05-05T05:57:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Inverse of stream parser

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 2:52 AM, Florian Gilcher <flo@andersground.net> wrote:
> Just to be clear, too: By interfacing Java with JRuby, you get a Ruby API that feels like its written by a Java consultant struggling on his first steps to learn Ruby.

I don't know a lot of struggling Java consultants that have released
Java libraries used on a wide scale. In fact, I don't know any
struggling Java consultants that have released libraries, period.
Maybe the APIs would be better if they did.

I think you're overstating the problem. Many Java libraries are
overdesigned, this is true. But JRuby does more than just provide a
means to call them; it provides a lot of other niceities like passing
a block or arbitrary object as the implementation of an interface and
not having to convert or cast values all over.

I also don't think it's a whole lot better when people write C
extensions that just wrap a raw C API. If anything, C APIs are usually
*underdesigned*, and it becomes a mess just to fit them nicely into an
OO language. The truth is that just providing the ability to call from
Ruby a library written in C or Java isn't always enough; but it's a
hell of a lot easier to start with the Java library in JRuby, since
you don't even have to compile anything.

- Charlie