From: "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@...>
Date: 2004-05-04T02:43:59+09:00
Subject: Re: What do you use Ruby for?

On 3 May 2004, Glenn wrote:

> OK, the more I read about Ruby (currently on page 29 of the FAQ,
> having read Matz' (translated) user-guide, the more I like it.  The
> funny thing is that Smalltalk is one of those languages I've always
> wanted to learn, but never quite got to grips with.  Ruby seems to
> have a lot Smalltalk, but packaged up in nice wrapping paper.
> 
> The downside for me is that generally I can't see myself using Ruby
> day-to-day at work, because it's not ALL that common for me to require
> a scripting language.  That said, if I could push myself to find
> reasons, I'd really like to use it more and more.  And I'll certainly
> be trying!!
> 
> I guess it's primary use would be for dynamic web pages, just like
> Perl etc.  but as I don't get involved in that kind of thing, that's
> no good to me.
> 
> So what do YOU use Ruby for?  What kinds of development are you using
> it for (I'm not asking for trade secrets or anything!).


- image processing using classes wrapping mmap and narray

- any app where i need a little database, but don't need a database server
  (YAML::Store, PStore, Madeline, etc.)

- any app where i need to interface to an rdbms - i use postgresql

- any web code

- static html generation

- code generators - config files, C programs, fortran programs, etc.

- wrapping arcane C and idl programs with a command line interface that makes
  sense (we have a lot of code that __requires__ 30 or 40 arguments to run!)

- gui programs, just shippped a gui last week 

- data munging, ascii and binary.  i use mmap for binary munging...

- distributed applications, drb, nfslocked PStore, etc.

- general 'scripting' tasks


actually, i guess i use ruby for __everything__.   let me ask you this, what
kind of programming do you do and what makes you think it cannot be done in
ruby?  i'm not saying it can't, just wondering.

-a
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