From: John Morrice <spoon@...>
Date: 2010-11-15T22:22:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Vs PHP


> Having large libraries of code (coupled with the fact that Ruby has a
> slow interpreter) does make Ruby somewhat slower performance wise,
> however a Ruby programer would argue that because Ruby language is
> more efficient that PHP by re-using code and by using symbols where
> necessary instead of strings that makes up for it's slow rendering
> time.

Neither PHP or Ruby are high-performance languages. [1]  To bring up the
obvious example, neither are (usually) compiled.

So it seems a little strange to compare the two in this manner.  Kinda
like racing snails! (Cute little snails...)

In the functional programming community, a language design is deemed to
be elegant when it has a small 'core', because then you get
benefits like not needing lots of syntax, a more organized compiler -
indeed, this minimalism is something the functional community strive
for! [2]

I'm don't know how Ruby is implemented, but it certainly *feels* like a
small language, at least to me.  Initializing an object - a method
call.  Defining a class can be done with method calls.  All you need
are methods and objects, and constants:

A = Class.new

A.module_eval do
   def neatsville
      puts "That's Jazz"
   end
end

a = A.new
a.neatsville

=> That's Jazz

It's easy to see how the more traditional way of defining a class can
be decomposed into these simpler operations - this is definitely
subjective, but from a minimalist point of view that is a *good thing*.

How would you do this with PHP?  Is it even possible?  Someone else will
have to take this up, for I am a PHP noob.

[1] Ruby and PHP are both close to the bottom of the (flawed) benchmarks
  game, way outpaced by rockets like Javascript and Smalltalk...
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-languages-are-fastest.php

[2] Simon Peyton Jones - Implementing functional languages: a
tutorial.  The chapter on the G-Machine is quite accessible.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/pj-lester-book/

Johnny