From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2003-01-17T00:55:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby advocacy in sigs

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003, Mauricio [iso-8859-1] Fern�ndez wrote:

> > It has the familiarity for Unix users and Perlists of regexp
        [...]
> > the unit testing facilities of java, ..., ... all in the one language.
>
> Then Ruby would be perceived as "another set of random features". Lots

Well, they aren't random, they are the bits those lanaguage users
like about their language, but, true, people may not see that.

> of languages suffer featuritis, and people would tend to think that
> Ruby is amongst them if we make such a list of borrowed things.
> I would focus on how well-thought the current features are, and on the care
> being taken to be sure they fit within POLS.

Yes, actually as I wrote that paragraph about different features I
was reminded that this doesn't actually attract me to a language.
[I meant it as a *positive* way of expressing difference, really]

People rave about things such as "first class <thingies>" or closures
or... but what I want to know about a language is what will it make
easier, what tasks does it bring within my grasp?  Manipulating
strings with perl4.036 made getting info across the awk/shell
boundary look really clumsy, and awk made C look painful for
handling text.  What actually made me move to ruby was the
networking code, because I could not figure out the Perl setup for
that, which seemed to be in a 4/5 state of flux at the time.  The
ruby examples were clear.

I think things like the 200-line mail/news gateway for this list.
I've been reading The Practice of Programming, Kernighan & Pike, and
Ruby fits well with their points about brevity, simplicity, and
readbility.

        Hugh

>
>