[#376274] Best Linux Distro for Ruby? — Nick Hird <boondox@...>

What are some of the better linux distro's for ruby development? I know

15 messages 2011/01/02

[#376329] Is singleton class of an object already created? — Samnang Chhun <samnang.chhun@...>

I would like to know is there any ways to check is singleton class of an

12 messages 2011/01/04

[#376333] Threading in ruby — "Vishnu I." <pathsny@...>

Hi

13 messages 2011/01/04
[#376335] Re: Threading in ruby — Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...> 2011/01/04

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Vishnu I. <pathsny@gmail.com> wrote:

[#376339] ripl - an irb alternative - 0.3.0 released — ghorner <gabriel.horner@...>

ripl, a light modular alternative to irb, has reached 0.3.0. ripl

32 messages 2011/01/04

[#376382] Class Initialization? — Kedar Mhaswade <kedar.mhaswade@...>

I have a class and two class methods: self.encode and self.decode. The

14 messages 2011/01/05
[#376385] Re: Class Initialization? — Andrew Wagner <wagner.andrew@...> 2011/01/05

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 9:33 AM, Kedar Mhaswade <kedar.mhaswade@gmail.com>wrote:

[#376388] Petition to add Metasploit Project as Ruby success story — Christian Kirsch <Christian_Kirsch@...7.com>

I noticed the Ruby success stories on the Ruby website. I would like to mak=

10 messages 2011/01/05

[#376453] Block variable - How is it read in English? — SW Engineer <abder.rahman.ali@...>

Following the "Ruby on Rails Tutorial", and under section "6.1.1

16 messages 2011/01/06

[#376574] Best way for Array#find+transform ? — "Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm)" <jonas@...>

There is a pattern that I'm using quite regularly, but I'm not

17 messages 2011/01/08
[#376575] Re: Best way for Array#find+transform ? — Anurag Priyam <anurag08priyam@...> 2011/01/08

> I know I can come up with a new method on Array that would shorten this t=

[#376576] Re: Best way for Array#find+transform ? — Anurag Priyam <anurag08priyam@...> 2011/01/08

> paths.map{|path| File.join(path, filename)}.select{|name| File.exist?(path)}

[#376577] Re: Best way for Array#find+transform ? — "Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm)" <jonas@...> 2011/01/09

2011/1/8 Anurag Priyam <anurag08priyam@gmail.com>:

[#376579] Re: Best way for Array#find+transform ? — David J. Hamilton <groups@...> 2011/01/09

Excerpts from Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm)'s message of Sat Jan 08 16:05:05 -0800 2011:

[#376586] Re: Best way for Array#find+transform ? — "Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm)" <jonas@...> 2011/01/09

2011/1/9 David J. Hamilton <groups@hjdivad.com>:

[#376606] Re: Best way for Array#find+transform ? — David J. Hamilton <groups@...> 2011/01/10

Excerpts from Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm)'s message of Sun Jan 09 04:08:10 -0800 2011:

[#376680] Parallel Assignments and Elegance/Complexity Ratio. — Kedar Mhaswade <kedar.mhaswade@...>

In SICP, I read that "Programs should be written for people to read, and

15 messages 2011/01/11
[#376697] Re: Parallel Assignments and Elegance/Complexity Ratio. — Josh Cheek <josh.cheek@...> 2011/01/11

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Kedar Mhaswade <kedar.mhaswade@gmail.com>wrote:

[#376682] JRuby 1.6.0.RC1 released — Thomas E Enebo <tom.enebo@...>

The JRuby community is pleased to announce the release of JRuby 1.6.0.RC1.

14 messages 2011/01/11

[#376744] Case statements - Just beautification — flebber <flebber.crue@...>

I just want to clarify case statements the name after the word case is

10 messages 2011/01/12

[#376792] Ruby is interpreted and scripting language? — Sai Babu <sateesh.mca09@...>

I am ruby fresher.

16 messages 2011/01/13

[#376855] Retrieving and copying element from array — Simon Harrison <simon@...>

If I have an array like this:

11 messages 2011/01/13

[#376898] What are your ruby rough cuts ? — "Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm)" <jonas@...>

Hi rubyists,

32 messages 2011/01/14
[#376930] Re: [poll] What are your ruby rough cuts ? — David Masover <ninja@...> 2011/01/15

On Friday, January 14, 2011 07:34:04 am Jonas Pfenniger (zimbatm) wrote:

[#376937] Re: What are your ruby rough cuts ? — Joseph Lenton <jl235@...> 2011/01/15

David Masover wrote in post #975080:

[#376959] Why Quby? (was Re: What are your ruby rough cuts ?) — David Masover <ninja@...> 2011/01/15

On Saturday, January 15, 2011 04:42:58 am Joseph Lenton wrote:

[#377020] Obscure syntax error — Rolf Timmermans <molfie@...>

Hi all,

16 messages 2011/01/17

[#377052] Calling by Reference - Two Questions — Mike Stephens <rubfor@...>

I know I'm not the first person to get stumped by how to get Ruby to

15 messages 2011/01/18

[#377072] The most recommended way of naming methods in Ruby — Edmond Kachale <edmond.kachale@...>

Rubists,

14 messages 2011/01/18
[#377082] Re: The most recommended way of naming methods in Ruby — Phillip Gawlowski <cmdjackryan@...> 2011/01/18

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Edmond Kachale

[#377121] Improving performance of hash math — dblock <dblockdotorg@...>

I am trying to improve performance of Euclidian distance between two

13 messages 2011/01/19

[#377226] Totally lost in learning Ruby — Hilary Bailey <my77elephants@...>

This is my second attempt to understand Ruby. I completely read 1)

61 messages 2011/01/21
[#378239] Re: Totally lost in learning Ruby — Hilary Bailey <my77elephants@...> 2011/02/08

Hi everybody,

[#378246] Re: Totally lost in learning Ruby — Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...> 2011/02/08

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 3:16 AM, Hilary Bailey <my77elephants@gmail.com> wro=

[#377236] using gems installed via 'sudo gem install' — "Piotr S." <thisredoned@...>

I've installed ruby-opengl through sudo gem install because there were

15 messages 2011/01/21

[#377362] pg gem 0.10.1 wth Ruby 1.9.2 does not work with method @pg_conn.exec_prepared(stmt_name, parameters) — Zeno Davatz <zdavatz@...>

Hi

9 messages 2011/01/24

[#377388] The finer points of postfix conditionals. — Jon Leighton <j@...>

Hi,

13 messages 2011/01/24

[#377411] Obtain data from .csv — Kamarulnizam Rahim <niezam54@...>

Sample of .csv file:

19 messages 2011/01/25

[#377609] why is overloading invalid in ruby. — Ted Flethuseo <flethuseo@...>

I don't understand why when I try to overload I get an error. Can I

36 messages 2011/01/27

[#377645] If you had the choice between Ruby & Groovy — Noah Cutler <sit1way@...>

Hey All.

15 messages 2011/01/28

[#377650] IDE? — <johan.tempelman@...>

Hi,

13 messages 2011/01/28

[#377703] Zlib::GzipReader and multiple compressed blobs in a single stream — Jos Backus <jos@...>

Hi,

11 messages 2011/01/28

[#377761] New to programming AND new to Ruby — "Cassandra K." <cassandra.k@...>

Hello. I am trying to teach myself Ruby. I have no background in

13 messages 2011/01/31

[#377785] 2011: Which Ruby books have you read? And which would you recommend? — "Aston J." <azzzz@...>

I know there are a lot of threads about books, but some of them are as

16 messages 2011/01/31

[#377800] How to know the exit status within at_exit() block? — Iñaki Baz Castillo <ibc@...>

Hi, my program invokes "exit true" or "exit false" and I want to catch

17 messages 2011/01/31

Re: Ruby is interpreted and scripting language?

From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2011-01-14 12:53:38 UTC
List: ruby-talk #376894
On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Tony Arcieri <tony.arcieri@medioh.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 8:16 AM, Brian Nicar <surprisevalley@verizon.net>wrote:
>
>> As I see it, a language that is interpreted utilizes a middle-man to make
>> calls to the system, allowing for greater flexibility when generating and
>> modifying code in a dynamic environment.
>
>
> I'd say that's fairly close to my definition.
>
> Compiled languages translate the source code into machine language and
> execute it directly on the host CPU. Source code can either be compiled
> ahead-of-time (e.g. with a compiler you invoke that outputs a host
> executable) or just-in-time (JIT) as the programming language is executing.
>
> Interpreted languages use a virtual machine or AST walker to perform the
> execution. There can be an intermediate step wherein the source code is
> translated to an intermediate bytecode.
>
> Many language runtimes implement a hybrid of these two approaches, and start
> by interpreting all code then finding "hot spots" via runtime profiling and
> compiling those.

These are all really implementation choices rather than a
characteristic of the language itself.

Traditionally, a compiler was a separate program which translated
source code into linkable object code.  The way you get an executable
module in a 'traditional way' is to run several units of source code
through one or more compilers, which one depending on the language of
each source code unit; then run the resulting object code units
through a linker (or linkage editor if you have an IBM heritage) to
produce loadable modules.

I think the 'scripting language' moniker started out as describing
things like Unix shell scripts, which didn't go through this process
but were directly executable, being interpreted by the shell.  They
were viewed as languages for quick tasks, with real programs to be
written in real languages with a traditional tool chain.

It's interesting that even in this traditional view, even a language
like C goes through a "middle man to make calls to the system" in the
form of a standard subroutine library, at least some of which is
likely written in Assembly language. And that an assembler is really a
kind of compiler, albeit for a very low level language close to the
target hardware.

More and more, implementations bring the compiler and linker functions
inside the tent.  There are variations on what kind of output the
'compiler' produces.  Typically it's some form of machine instructions
for a higher level virtual machine rather than the real hardware.
There are implementations of languages like C which actual compile to
such a virtual machine, and not to hardware instructions.  The
performance of such implementations can be surprising, since the
virtual machine instructions can be more compact, resulting in less
virtual memory overhead. There have also been implementations of
languages like Smalltalk which have compiled to machine instructions
rather than byte codes, and again the performance was surprising. For
example, back in the 1980s the folks at Digitalk (which later merged
with ParcPlace and I guess is now Cincom) got tired of hearing about
their Smalltalk V being 'interpreted' and came out with a release
which did just as I described, it generated 80286 machine
instructions.  The result was that it actually ran slower than the
implementation which used byte codes, because it's quicker for a
virtual machine to execute byte codes which are already in real memory
rather than waiting for the faster machine code to be swapped in from
disk.

Thats one of the reasons why hot-spot is good, it makes a nice
speed/space tradeoff, keeping the working set smaller while allowing
frequently executed code to be re-compiled for speed.

There are various kinds of interpreter.  Traditionally an interpreter
executes some internal representation of code, which might be an
abstract syntax tree, or threaded code, or the like.  On the other
hand a virtual machine can be viewed as an interpreter of what are
loosely called byte codes, and in reality a hardware computer is an
interpreter of machine instructions.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Github: http://github.com/rubyredrick
Twitter: @RickDeNatale
WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale

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