Re: ripl - an irb alternative - 0.3.0 released

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Ryan Davis <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> On Jan 4, 2011, at 06:24 , Robert Klemme wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 2:55 PM, ghorner <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> ripl, a light modular alternative to irb, has reached 0.3.0. ripl
>>> works on most major rubies (1.8.x, 1.9.x, rubinius and jruby), has a
>>> growing plugin ecosystem of 15+ plugins and is fully documented and
>>> tested. For more on ripl's features and advantages over irb see:
>>>
>>> * http://github.com/cldwalker/ripl
>>> * http://rbjl.net/44-ripl-why-should-you-use-an-irb-alternative
>>
>> This looks interesting, although I would only use it if I need a shell
>> framework. ou do not mention a few downsides of ripl:
>>
>> - it is not automatically there as IRB is because it's part of a
>> standard Ruby installation (or present in the package system)
>
> So... you only advocate using 100% ruby-core + stdlib. Right.

Not exactly.  I am balancing benefits and costs.  For me using ripl as
replacement of IRB has zero advantages but some cost.  As simple as
that.

>> - users need to learn it
>
> And they didn't need to learn irb. That's a ridiculous point to try to make. You have to learn EVERY tool and EVERY library you use.

That's not the point.  Users *have* learned IRB already and to use
ripl they start learning again so this is additional overhead.

>> Also, I don't find the argument of 5,000 vs. 270 loc very appealing:
>> every software acquires some "weight" as it grows older. ven if
>> ripl's core does not gain that much - the gain then simply will be in
>> the plugins. ver time the loc gap will likely shrink so this is at
>> best a temporary argument. :-)
>
> Well, that's entirely inane. You've obviously never looked at the guts of irb.

That's true.  But why should I bother if it does what I need it to do
reasonably well?

> IRB _started_ at 5k (actually ~7k) and has been monotonically increasing every since:
>
> 3063 % find ruby_1_6/lib/irb* -type f | xargs wc -l | tail -1
> 779 total
> 3064 % find ruby_1_8_6/lib/irb* -type f | xargs wc -l | tail -1
> 11136 total
> 3065 % find ruby_1_8_7/lib/irb* -type f | xargs wc -l | tail -1
> 12519 total
> 3066 % find ruby_1_9_2/lib/irb* -type f | xargs wc -l | tail -1
> 16052 total
>
> It is to the point where it is downright _painful_ to try to maintain, much less enhance.

Are you the maintainer?  If not, did he / she complain?

> If ripl starts at 270 lines, it isn't even in the same league (in a good way) as irb. That means that it'll be orders of magnitude easier to understand (more than really; the complexity in a system like this is probably geometric, if not exponential).
>
>> Side note: funnily enough I have become more conservative in the
>> course of time; maybe it's because I see the cost of change clearer
>> nowadays. t least I rather invest energy in new things that are
>> needed than in creating replacements for things that work. robably
>> I'm approaching grumpy old man state... :-)
>
> apparently. grumpy irrational old man at that...

Irrational - I don't think so.  I just happen to judge according to
different values than you are.

Cheers

robert

-- 
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