From: "Tristan (kesuari)" <THE-THING-IN-BRACKETS-IN-MY-NAME@...>
Date: 2003-08-24T20:02:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Why did you switch from Python to Ruby?

Rudolf Polzer wraet:
> Scripsit ille aut illa �Doug Kearns� <djkea2@mugca.its.monash.edu.au>:
> 
>>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/judoscript/message/295
> 
> 
> What does stand there? I get a cyclic redirect.
> 
> 

Copy-paste with selected headers.

Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 19:39:08 -0000
To: judoscript@yahoogroups.com
Subject: JudoScript is great for hacks! (#1)
Message-ID: <bi5rgs+t134@e...>
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From: "j2geek" <stjake@c...>

.... I just wanted to be the first one to say it...

Please allow me to gush at length about JS for a moment.

After playing w/ JudoScript for about a week I am astonished at the
power of JudoScript. James, this language has such incredible
potential it's mind boggling. I'm going to be dedicating at least 25%
of my development to JudoScript, and am abandoning ruby (which
superseded perl) for JS as my default scripting language.

And James, I'm not even talking about JS as a scripting language in
your sense of #2 or #3, although I will write about that in future
posts. JudoScript qua a general purpose scripting language is
exceptional.

Let me offer an example from the programming language shootout: a
simple version of the unix 'wc' command. Here is my JS version, w/
thanks to Brendan for his RegEx patch, along with the Ruby, Perl, and
Python versions (yes, I know, there are slight differences between
mine and the others):

-----------wc.judo-----------------------------

do #args[0] as lines {
::lines++;
::words += $_.split('\\S+').length();
::chars += $_.length;
}
.. lines, ' ', words, ' ', chars;

-----------wc.python-----------------------------

import sys

def main():
nl = nw = nc = 0
rl = sys.stdin.readlines
lines = rl(4096)

while lines:
nl += len(lines)
for line in lines:
nc += len(line)
nw += len(line.split())
lines = rl(4096)

print "%d %d %d" % (nl, nw, nc)

main()

------------wc.ruby---------------------------------------

nl = nw = nc = 0
loop do
data = (STDIN.read(4096) or break) << (STDIN.gets || "")
nc += data.length
nl += data.count("\n")
((data.strip! || data).tr!("\n", " ") || data).squeeze!
nw += data.count(" ") + 1
end
puts "#{nl} #{nw} #{nc}"

------------wc.perl----------------------------------------
use strict;

my($nl, $nw, $nc);
while (read(STDIN, $_, 4095)) {
$_ .= <STDIN>;
$nl += scalar(split(/\n/));
$nc += length;
$nw += scalar(split);
}
print "$nl $nw $nc\n";
-----------------------------------------------------------

Not only is the judoscript version the most terse, it's also seems to
me to be the most intuitively obvious. Okay, I admit that the use of
.. and :: aren't as clear as 'println' or explicitly declaring the
variables in the global scope, but they are "the judo way".

Which bring me to a couple random other thoughts:

1- Have you considered dropping "script" from JudoScript, and just
calling it "Judo"? It lends itself to metaphor, much like Java did
(beans, cafe, hot spot, etc..). This is strickly a marketing issue.
Would Java have been Java if it remained "Oak"?

2- Have you thought about a convenience syntax for printing variables
within quoted text? (maybe even, (yuck!) printf style (yuck!)? Don't
follow ruby here: Ruby's interpolation is too hard to type "#{}". I'd
rather stick with "'',". Has anyone seen a really great in-quotes
interpolation syntax that could be co-opted? Anyone got a great idea
here?

3- Have you considered using both ';' and '\n' (line ends) as
terminators? This allows semis to be optional in standard "one line
one expression" style coding.

Lovin' JS,
Jake (aka J2gEEk)

--End Quote

--
Tristan.