From: Ben Giddings <ben@...>
Date: 2003-08-22T03:27:00+09:00
Subject: Re: What attracts me to Ruby

Tim Rowe wrote:
> Wan't somebody here deprecating Python for it's "one way of doing
> things" a while ago?  When I saw my first Python program I understood
> perfectly well what it did, but when I saw my first Ruby program I
> couldn't make sense of it.  Obviously, that's a function of my
> personal history (and in particular, I still believe, that my personal
> history doesn't include Perl), and readability is bound to improve
> when one learns the language!

Interesting.  Were the programs you first saw of equivalent complexity? 
  Was the Ruby one using some of the odd advanced features like 
instance_eval, class << self, or something similar?

> That's another reason I like Python (and prefer C++ to Java, FWIW) --
> I don't believe object orientation is the answer to all problems, and
> sometimes it just gets in the way.  Python (and C++) give me the
> choice, Ruby (and Java) don't.  Now I'm getting /really/ confused
> which language has "more than one way to do it" and which has "only
> one way to do it" :-)

This is another thing that seems strange to me.  Ruby's object 
orientation has never seemed intrusive to me.  You can write anything as 
if it were a non-OO language, and things just live in the "main" 
namespace.  I can't think of any ways in which Ruby's OO nature made it 
more difficult to do something.  Can you think of a quick example?

My problem with Python was when I wanted to make things seem OO, the 
language got in my way.  I was always faced with lots of underscores, 
and having to pass "self" into methods.  In the end, I think it was 
underscores that drove me away from Python.

Ben