From: Charles Comstock <cc1@...>
Date: 2004-02-09T05:59:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Python 25 times as popular as Ruby !?

Emmanuel Touzery wrote:

> On Sunday 01 of February 2004 08:53, Dan Doel wrote:
> 
>>But why should it matter if Ruby is more known than Python or Java or C
>>or whatever?
> 
> 
> because then i can do ruby at my daily work instead of suffering in C# :O)
> for now ruby is only acceptable for internal tools, clients want 
> buzzword-compliant tools. python might be in this class soon, and i'd like 
> ruby to get there too.. (and i trust matz not to cripple the language to get 
> there)
> 
> emmanuel
> 
> 

I certainly would probably rather do it in C# then Java.  It's 
interesting in the 2.0 spec for C# they are adding yield symantics, 
anonymous method blocks and generics.  But the first two allow all the 
iteration style of Ruby that is so nice.  In terms of a typed language I 
don't mind C# that much, it's alot more logical then Java.  I have many 
bones to pick with Microsoft, but they did fix alot of the stupid 
problems in Java.  I think it's an acceptable language.

Of course, I like lots of languages so, that's just me.  Ruby is my 
favorite at the moment, I just have room in my head to like more then 
one.  I would like however to see Ruby more mainstream as well.

It actually might be interesting to push Ruby in the academic world, 
though sometimes I dispair that teaching an object oriented language 
first confuses many of the introductory programmers who haven't 
programmed at all before.  But still it might be a little more 
approachable then Scheme for some, since they syntax isn't quite so 
foreign.  From the acedemic world though you might be able to bridge to 
the industry.  Just a thought.

We definitely more complete docs on lots of things though, that is my 
main problem with Ruby.  There are lots of things I know I can do, 
without duplicating work, but since I can't find docs on it, it's 
difficult to do.  The push for RDoc is great, but I still have the same 
complaints about it that I have of Javadoc, it generally doesn't give 
some sort of example for each function, class in the library.  I learn 
far more from an example of code use that encompasses a wide part of the 
library then a list of functions I can call in the library.  The 2nd is 
great, but it only works if you know how to use it already.  Fix the 
documentation and I think ruby will certainly spring ahead.

Charles Comstock