From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2003-11-19T16:52:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Reason #642 to use Ruby instead of C++ -Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

In article <20031118183857.GB18667@student.ei.uni-stuttgart.de>,
Mauricio Fern�ndez  <batsman.geo@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 07:04:19AM +0900, Martin Weber wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 06:47:00AM +0900, Josef 'Jupp' SCHUGT wrote:
>> > (...)
>> > The essential mistake is counting lines. What one should count is the
>> > number of characters.
>> 
>> Sure.
>> 
>> for (LI n=b.begin(); n != b.end(); ++n)
>> 	if (_a[nd].find(*n) != _a[nd].end())
>> 		ec++;
>> 
>> The essential mistake is trying to count something. Go feel & figure.
>
>Somebody proposed the number of tokens as quite a reasonable measurement,
>to be taken with a grain of salt as all metrics.
>

And as I mentioned in the original post, the Ruby snippet is much more 
'comprensible' (readable?) at a glance than the C++ one.

And just to introduce another measure: productivity.  I did the original 
Ruby prototype in 2 hours (including debugging the algorithm) and then set 
out to 'translate' it to C++.  It took me a couple of days (well, 
probably about 10 to 12 hours total) to get it all working in C++.  Now, 
sure, I don't program in C++ every day so I might be a bit rusty, but 
even if I double my C++ productivity, I'd still be more than 2 to 3X more 
productive in Ruby.

Phil