I just spotted these two snippets of Ruby recognition on the Apple
Xserve product page (http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/web.html):
“…any number of custom applicatons from web development tools such
as PHP, MySQL, JSP or Ruby.”
“Mac OS X Server now supports Ruby, a simple and powerful
object-oriented programming language along the veins of Perl”
Not bad at all. Well, besides being lumped in with Perl, perhaps 
/ David
David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:
- “Mac OS X Server now supports Ruby, a simple and powerful
object-oriented programming language along the veins of Perl”
Shouldn’t that be “along the lines of Perl?” Along the veins implies
that we got injected somehow… Hmmm, maybe we did.
Considering that it’s a one-sentence introduction for people who might
never have heard of Ruby, I think it’s not bad, considenring that a big
part of Ruby’s purpose is to be “a better Perl than Perl”.
On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 05:24:59AM +0900, David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:
- “Mac OS X Server now supports Ruby, a simple and powerful
object-oriented programming language along the veins of Perl”Not bad at all. Well, besides being lumped in with Perl, perhaps
–
Daniel Carrera | PGP: 6643 8C8B 3522 66CB D16C D779 2FDD 7DAC 9AF7 7A88
Math PhD. UMD | http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/pgp.html
Weekly Smile:
There are 10 types of people in the world…
Those who understand binary - and those who don’t.
David Heinemeier Hansson graced us by uttering:
[ snippage ]
- “Mac OS X Server now supports Ruby, a simple and powerful
object-oriented programming language along the veins of Perl”Not bad at all. Well, besides being lumped in with Perl,
perhaps
I’ve never understood why some Rubyists despise their Perl roots
so much.
I observed much ridicule of Perl in the c.l.py newsgroup where
Perl represented the antithesis of the language in question. In
fact, among the newer generation of interpreted languages, Perl
seems to be the bastard stepchild whom everyone belittles. It
has appeared to me on several occasions that it’s almost a rite
of passage for one to make fun of Perl’s syntax in order to be
accepted into the “cool” clique.
That may be all well and good for Pythonistas, but Ruby borrows
heavily from Perl, and makes no attempt to hide it. Aside from
the rather obvious inclusion of dozens of special variables, the
ruby executable also largely functions identically to perl,
taking many of the same options and switches. Finally, much of
the grammar of Ruby, especially where regular expressions are
concerned, are obviously in the spirit of Perl.
Assuming that much of the above would never have become part of
Ruby if there weren’t significant worth and utility in it, why
then do we lower ourselves to the petty jokes of our peers and
find ourselves condemning our own heritage?
To liken this to natural languages, isn’t this much like the
French condemning Latin for it’s foolish practice of conjugation?
Pensively,
Tim Hammerquist
–
There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make
the parser more complex. I do, occasionally, struggle feebly
against complexity… 
– Larry Wall in 7886@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV
Why do language designers persist in thinking that simple
languages produce simple solutions? All it does is sweep the
complexity of the problem under someone else’s carpet.
– Larry Wall in 199911300903.BAA26153@kiev.wall.org
It’s the Magic that counts.
– Larry Wall on Perl’s apparent ugliness
Naah, it’s more like how teenagers are so incredibly embarrassed to be
seen with their parents. Sometimes the teenagers are overly sensitive
about their parents’ flaws. Sometimes, they are simply right. I mean,
black socks with flip-flops? C’mon!
Perl is fun. If there were no Ruby I’d probably still use it. Doing
OO-ish programming in Perl… that’s black socks and flip-flops.
Ben
On Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 10:47 PM, Tim Hammerquist wrote:
To liken this to natural languages, isn’t this much like the
French condemning Latin for it’s foolish practice of conjugation?
Well, I’m just a ruby beginner (and perl beginner too), and I know C
fairly well,
but I must say that for me Perl is almost unusable, whereas Ruby is
perfect !
Ok I use Ruby for rather simple tasks… I use Awk very often for text
"formating", and I use Python to embed C routines. I plan to use Ruby
to
replace both. And I insist, for me it’s not simply a joke to say perl
is too
complicated. I tried to learn, and I don’t think I’m too stupid or too
lazy.
If you remember TECO, you will have a good basis for comparison 
That really put a smile on my face - thanks!
I’ve been kicking the tyres on ruby for a while now, but only recently
wrote a “proper app”, by which I mean completely test-first, cleanly
refactored, etc. The signal to noise ratio is awesome, coming from a
Java background by way of C++ and Perl. I write a failing test, write
about 3 lines of really clean Ruby code, and the test passes. Where’s
the casting? Where’s the Foo foo = new Foo() verbosity? Interfaces?
Dynamic proxies? Woohoo - I don’t need any of that nonsense!
I’ve written object-oriented Perl systems - and no, it’s not pretty! -
and I often describe Ruby as the bastard offspring of Perl and Smalltalk
(well come on - they aren’t exactly married are they?).
It seems to me the reason Ruby is so Perl-friendly is a deliberate
tactic to encourage Perlmongers wanting to try out Ruby, rather than
thinking “that’s a really clear, intuitive syntax - let’s do it that
way!”. It’s all implemented as syntactic sugar around a pure
object-oriented language anyway, and as I am discovering the Ruby Way of
doing things like blocks, iterators, mixins etc. the Perl and Java
syntax just feels clumsy. (My first attempts at Ruby looked a lot like
Java - no surprise there then - but now they look a lot more like Ruby
Just the confused ramblings etc.,
Dan
ps. Just noticed 5.times do |i| … end. This language rocks!
Ben Giddings wrote:
On Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 10:47 PM, Tim Hammerquist wrote:
To liken this to natural languages, isn’t this much like the
French condemning Latin for it’s foolish practice of conjugation?Naah, it’s more like how teenagers are so incredibly embarrassed to be
seen with their parents. Sometimes the teenagers are overly sensitive
about their parents’ flaws. Sometimes, they are simply right. I
mean, black socks with flip-flops? C’mon!Perl is fun. If there were no Ruby I’d probably still use it. Doing
OO-ish programming in Perl… that’s black socks and flip-flops.Ben
Ben Giddings graced us by uttering:
Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 10:47 PM, Tim Hammerquist wrote:
To liken this to natural languages, isn’t this much like the
French condemning Latin for it’s foolish practice of
conjugation?Naah, it’s more like how teenagers are so incredibly
embarrassed to be seen with their parents. Sometimes the
teenagers are overly sensitive about their parents’ flaws.
Sometimes, they are simply right. I mean, black socks with
flip-flops? C’mon!
Ok, yeah, I remember my dad in that get-up.
Similar to how the French might be annoyed that over
half the letters in Latin are actually pronounced. 
Perl is fun. If there were no Ruby I’d probably still use it.
Doing OO-ish programming in Perl… that’s black socks and
flip-flops.
Amen. OO was really the only thing I missed in Perl when I
started looking at Ruby. Iterators were a huge bonus!
Cheers!
Tim Hammerquist
–
Destinations are often a surprise to the destined.
– Thessaly, The Sandman
Jean-Claude Arbaut graced us by uttering:
Ok I use Ruby for rather simple tasks… I use Awk very often
for text “formating”, and I use Python to embed C routines. I
plan to use Ruby to replace both.
Sounds like a good tactic to me!
but I must say that for me Perl is almost unusable, whereas
Ruby is perfect ! […] And I insist, for me it’s not simply a
joke to say perl is too complicated. I tried to learn, and I
don’t think I’m too stupid or too lazy.
I’m sure you’re not. One of the greatest mistakes I ever made
was to try to learn Perl as a variation on any programming
language I’d ever known. It took months of struggling, as well
as a 3 month sabbatical during which I just had to let Perl
knowledge rot, ferment, and (finally) distill into the resultant
epiphany… and I don’t regret a day.
That’s just what it took for me. YMMV.
If you remember TECO, you will have a good basis for comparison
Smiley noted, but to compare Perl to TECO and thus, indirectly,
to Emacs, is to place Ruby on the other side of the Holy War with
vi. And I don’t like to be far away from vi, no matter which
langauge I program in!
Cheers!
Tim Hammerquist
–
As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.