From: jobeicus@... (Joseph Benik) Date: 2002-09-10T05:32:27+09:00 Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote in message news:... > Oh yes, there is no doubt about it. I just regretted that for a clever > man as Larry Wall, he still does not want to learn from his language > successor or to admit that the language "art" has progressed much since he > first wrote Perl. > > Regards, > > Bill i have a great deal of respect for Mr. Wall as i was a perl programmer for many years. however, i couldn't bring myself to read his critique of ruby. to me it's like asking the maker of Coke to give an overview of Pepsi as a soft-drink product. unless he's worked with ruby hands-on and has experience using the language to write real world projects, i don't feel the need to listen to his evaluation. the idea of appreciating a language for how it "feels" when you program seems like it was the last on the list of priorities when they created perl. how they kludge'd OO into perl 5 is such a great example. looking back i don't think i ever enjoyed writing a perl program. it reminds me so much of BASIC. it's functional, it gets the job done, but don't expect much more out of it. ruby is a different ballgame altogether. it seems so heavily influenced by eastern philosphy, the theory of feng shui, path of least resistance, etc. something only a true ruby programmer can understand, feel, and appreciate.