Re: Article on ARTIMA - a little bit emotional

One of the reasons I love Ruby is because of how I feel when I code in it. I 
feel happy. 

I wasn't a programmer and still don't think of myself as a programmer as I 
have been a tester for a long time, but in trying to learn various different 
languages like C or Java I found it pretty hard going and never managed to 
stick it out for long. 

I think this is mainly due to the language syntax - I never really could 
understand it fully and there seemed to be words I had to type which didn't 
seem to make sense to me. Ruby seemed to remove all this mystery with its 
intuitive and easy to understand syntax. 

Being a Martial Arts student for over 20 years now - I liken it to Bruce Lee's 
assessment of classical Martial arts - he focused on stripping away all the 
unnecessary and redundant structures and worked on improving the simplest way 
to achieve the goal. He believed in evolution and that anything that remains 
static and unchanging would soon wither.

I found some things in Life are designed to fit the individual - becoming a 
taylor made solution, like Wing Chun - one of the blocks works becuase you 
hold your arm in the correct position for your body - some styles make 
everyone hold their arm in the same position - no wonder they don't work as 
fluidly and effectively considering all the different shapes and sizes of 
people out there.

I find Ruby to be one of those things in life that feels like its designed to 
fit the individual - I'm not straining to understand all the time, instead it 
all feels natural and unrestricted. So there's a lot to be said for Matz 
concentration on this side of the language. Intuitive design is extremely 
important. I feel Ruby fits my personality and character very well - becoming 
an extension of myself almost, rather than an external tool. In fact I might 
even go so far as to say I can find self-expression in my Ruby Code. (I don't 
know if this is unusual for a programmer to feel?)

As for Ruby's apparent 'issues' mentioned above well I can see how they might 
hold back the explosion of Ruby into a commercial / enterprise arena. But 
seeing as I'd rather not code in anything else, I'd love Ruby to go in that 
direction. So If these issues are being addressed thats more strings to the 
bow.

Where I work there are a couple of people who I feel sure also love Ruby - 
people such as Martin Fowler and Dan North. Now If I could just give them 
something more to justify using Ruby in future projects then maybe our 
company would consider it. Which would make me very happy.

Anyway - I seemed to have typed more than I anticipated

as Hal Fulton so aptly named his book 'The Ruby Way', I am now beginning to 
understand the 'Ruby Way'. 

Where in programming I once struggled with interdiction, In Ruby I find 
accessibility, and where I once stumbled in the jungle of Syntax, In Ruby I 
step lightly, frreely and above all happily.

Kingsley





On Tuesday 30 September 2003 22:19, Bob X wrote:
> From the talkback:
>
> "Ruby is over 10 years old, very popular in Japan, gaining popularity in
> other parts of the world, have thousands of users and hundreds of hackers.
> However, the implementation (Ruby has only 1 currently, written in C) is
> pretty weak. It's slow, does not support native threads, does not do JIT
> compilation (not even bytecode), needs a better GC, etc. It is especially
> so if we compare it with Java and Smalltalk, who have gotten real good
> implementations (JIT compilers, fast GC, threads, etc) nowadays."
>
> Comments?