From: Seth Kurtzberg <seth@...>
Date: 2003-03-10T11:13:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Thinking of learning Ruby

Unfortunately, the quality of the language is not related to the employability 
of the programmer.  In fact, just the reverse is true (there are as many jobs 
for COBOL programmers as there are for any other language).  In the OO area 
the vast majority of jobs are for C++ and/or Java, even though these 
languages aren't even real OO languages.

As far as the GUI functionality, that is really a property of the GUI library 
and not the language.  Java has blurred this distinction somewhat, but for 
other languages there are multiple GUI libraries available which have 
different characteristics.

Ruby will steer you towards better programming practice than many other 
languages.  Also, unless you learn Ruby or Smalltalk (of the widely 
distributed languages) you won't really know what OO is about.

In the long run you will be better served by broadening your knowledge and 
understanding, and putting yourself in the best position to handle language 
technology as it evolves.

On Sunday 09 March 2003 05:22 pm, anonimous wrote:
> I have abour 3 or 4 years experience with Linux, and about 2 years
> experience with Java, recently though I decided to quit learning Java
> because I found it rather slow and lacking, the biggest problem is that Sun
> Microsystems made to many libraries for some functions and not enough for
> other functions, they also have quite a few bugs that are noticable when
> one tries to apply custom effects to GUI's such as setting colours with
> ..setBackground() and .setForeground() forsetting the colours. I am now
> looking for one or two alternative programming languages to replace Java, I
> am mostly interested in C, C++, Ruby, Python and Perl. What I would like to
> know is which one would be better off in your opinion(s), one of the things
> I concider important in a programming language is weather or not its good
> enough to get me a job in programming. I look forward to your reply(s) :-)

-- 
Seth Kurtzberg
M. I. S. Corp.
480-661-1849
seth@cql.com