[ruby-talk:7144] Re: Ruby in the US

Hi all,

IMHO, language comparison is a Good Thing but language bigotry is a Bad
Thing.  In my experience there is no one language that suits all purposes.
I love Perl for quick and dirty system tasks.  I love PHP for quick web page
development and database connectivity.  I love Visual Basic for quick
Windows programming (please no OS bigotry in response).  I'm learning to
love NQL for web agent development and I'm looking at REBOL for the same
thing.  The only language I really don't use is Java, but that's because the
learning curve appears to be higher than I have time for.  I like Forth for
machine control and monitoring.  I like Lisp just because it's cool and I
like to play around with high levels of abstraction now and then.

I guess my point is that I'm a developer first and a language advocate
second.  To me getting the job done is the most important.  When I need a
hammer, I grab a hammer.  When the job calls for a screwdriver, I grab one.
IMO, time is better spent on improving each set of tools versus debating
which is better.

Now why I like Ruby: Ruby is interesting because it combines features I like
from several of these languages.  Particularly, I like
private/public/protected methods, smooth inheritance of both variables and
methods and the mixin facility (a bit cleaner than using interfaces).  For
me, those facilities mean rapid development. It's easy to break a problem
down by its objects and incrementally develop the application from the
objects up.

Thanks for listening,

Vic Ivers