[ruby-talk:4929] Re: Some q's to Ruby professionals

Hi,

Franz GEIGER wrote:

> Ruby seems to me the FIRST language that REALLY took all the best from
all
> other languages. Seems to be well thought.

Ruby certainly took *much* of the best, but certainly not *all* of it. I
expect to see this great language continue to improve.

> As I encountered the language two days ago (in a Perl newsgroup!)

In


http://x59.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=668970618&CONTEXT=969033000.1739587633&hitnum=1



perhaps?

> I have a few questions. I ask them sorted by importance:
>
> 1) Is there a visual debugger for Ruby like there is for Perl and Python
> (Pythonwin)?

No, but there is the interesting possibility of piggybacking on
Activstate's Komodo IDE for Python and Perl:


http://x70.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=665454690&CONTEXT=969033652.283574281&hitnum=0


> 5) Will there ever be a JRuby (i.e. Ruby for Java) to be able to run
Ruby
> scripts on almost every platform on this world?

It seems unlikely at present. I think Ruby is (for most practical
purposes) already more or less as widely available as Java, platform-wise.
The main advantage of JRuby would probably be to access Java libraries.
However, for most purposes, it probably would almost always makes more
sense technically/economically to access these directly from Java, for
unfortunate interface and support reasons. This is one of the factors that
makes C#.NET potentially intriguing--that is, *if* it turns out to
actually be reasonably well ported to non-MS platforms.

> 6) Perl is currently rewritten. Shouldn't there be efforts to go into
Ruby's
> direction? Or taken this way round: Shouldn't Rubyists offer support to
the
> Perl6 crew?

It would be nice, but it turns out to be (technically) very difficult to
serve two masters.

However, you might want to check this out and put your question to someone
more directly involved:

     http://forums.itworld.com/webx?14@@.ee6cc5b

# Perl monger and Perl 6 project manager Nathan Torkington talks
# with Cameron Laird and forum members
# about all things Perl, and especially Perl 6.
# Interview runs September 13 through September 15.

> I ask this because I heard that Perl6 will contain elements of Python
and
> Ruby contain elements of both, doesn't it?

To some (highly qualified/limited) extent, this is somewhat true
feature-wise, but (so I've been told) the internals are radically
different.

--
Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)