From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-05-12T02:23:53+09:00
Subject: Re: in search of a compelling reason to use ruby....

In article <pan.2004.05.11.07.22.06.816380@sbcglobal.net>,
Ryan Paul  <segphault@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 11 May 2004 12:50:24 +0900, James Britt wrote:
>
>
>I've been taking a lot of notes while learning ruby, comparing the ruby
>examples to python equivalents, and recording how both ruby and
>python solve certain problems. I think I could probably clean up my notes
>a bit, and restructure them into a relatively good comparison between the
>languages. When I fill it out a bit more, i'll make it publicly available,
>and drop a link here and in comp.lang.python (where I will probably be
>lynched for my impertinence). 

Wear asbestos clothing that day ;-)

>So far, most of the criticisms of ruby that
>flourish in the python community are based on misconceptions. (for
>instance, a lot of people seem to know that ruby only supports single
>inheritance, but what they dont know is that the mixin system MORE than
>makes up for it)

We often hear that there's not much difference between Ruby and Python 
(and some Pythonistas suggest that Ruby is redundant).  I don't have 
extensive Python experience, but my intuition is that this isn't true at 
all once you get past superficial comparisons.  You seem to be debunking 
the myth that the two languages are essentially equivilent.

>
>I also want to write parts of it like a cookbook so that python
>programmers can see how ruby handles some of the specific things that are
>commonly done with python. The idea of 'switching languages' is really
>unnerving for a lot of programmers, and I think its really important to
>illustrate just how minimal the learning curve is. Ruby feels almost like
>a logical extension of python, with some pleasant perl tricks thrown in
>for good measure.

They're not real big on mentioning Perl over there ;-)

>
>Presentation is always an issue, and i'm still deciding what the best way
>to express the information would be. If I started a conversation with a
>python programmer saying something like "have you ever tried ruby? it does
>some neat things!" they would probably scoff, but if I said "what if you
>could do assignments in anonymous functions?" I might capture their
>interest.
>
>There is a growing community of python malcontents that might be
>interested in ruby. They have a lot of really creative syntax ideas, most
>of which are ignored by the mainstream python community. I think it would
>be of benefit to the ruby community to be aware of some of their interests
>and motivations. Some of those programmers might be interested in
>contributing to ruby, rather than working on their own independent
>python forks, if I can illustrate ways in which ruby meets their
>individual needs. To that end, I will probably spend some time looking at
>python derivatives to see where the divergences are, and how (if at all)
>their python extensions compare to some of ruby's development idioms.
>'Prothon' is a good example of a python derivative on my list. I also mean
>to show how ruby provides native support for many of the features hacked
>into python by Xoltar's partial, functional, and datastruct libraries.
>

Interesting.

>Ultimately, i'm interested in a flexible and powerful interpreted
>language, and what I have seen of ruby's style indicates a progressive and
>intuitive development paradigm that is bold enough to cast aside standards
>and cliches to return the power to the user.

Welcome to Ruby-land.

Phil