Call for commentary: review of Ruby for a magazine (long, sorry!)

ruby-talk
1

hello again folks,

i have a proposition for you: i’m looking for fodder on ruby’s
usefulness in the “real world”. (in my best nixonesque accent: “i am not
a troll”!)

i’m writing a review of the language for a major developers’ magazine,
and am interested in user’s views on the language. my audience will be
80,000 or so mostly corporate software people. so we have a real chance
to reach some folks here.

note that first person plural: it may make of me a biased reviewer, but
i count myself a member of the community, and a proponent of the
language. (ever since dave thomas thundered “BELIEVE!” at SD West 2002,
i became oddly willing to try anything in ruby!)

i am asking for your help for a couple of reasons. one is that the
community is a big part of the ruby experience, and i wanted a chance to
showcase it in the article. another is that your experience collectively
– and in many cases, individually – far exceeds my own.

here are some of the questions to which my readers will want to see good
answers. please feel free to chime in on any of them:

  1. is ruby just a “toy” language? OK, OK, don’t all shout at once – but
    who’s using it for medium-to-large projects, 10K SLOC and up?

  2. how does the language fare compared to other ones? do you have
    comparative-productivity numbers you’d be willing to share, vis-a-vis C
    (to be brutal) or Perl (to be a little fairer) or Python?

  3. in your experience, how has the language’s novelty affected its
    stability? for comparision, recall the early days of java, and how the
    evolution of the class library made “deprecated” a word that…well,
    let’s just say “sounds like something scatalogical” and leave it at
    that, eh?

  4. where do you use Ruby? headless cruncher programs on servers? as Web
    application glue? GUI end-user programs? fast one-off scripty things?

  5. what’s your favorite flavor of GUI for Ruby apps? how does using it
    compare with other UI class libraries you’ve tried (e.g., Swing, MFC,
    OWL, Qt, whatever)?

  6. what development tools do you use all the time for Ruby development?

  7. is Ruby just one of the arrows in your programming quiver, or have
    you made the leap and left other languages behind? if he former, is Ruby
    often your first choice for green-field development?

  8. open-ended essay: what drew you to Ruby? what keeps you working with
    it? what bugs you about it?

if this leads to healthy discussion on the list, great – i’ve
contributed in a small way. if you’d prefer to send replies directly to
me, feel free to do so. in addition to the article, which will appear in
december, and its online version, whose URL will be posted here when
it’s available, i will attempt to summarize the input i gather and post
it back here.

note that in order to quote you, i will need a real name, address, and
contact info. if you so request, i will not reveal that information, but
good journalism (not to mention Attila the Editor) requires that i
know who you are before i publish what you say. otherwise, i have to
treat what you say as “background” only.

thanks to all of you for your help,

rw

···

–
Rick Wayne
(when not writing, i’m a)
Systems Programmer
University of Wisconsin Soil Sciences
1525 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706

2
  1. is ruby just a “toy” language? OK, OK, don’t all shout at once – but
    who’s using it for medium-to-large projects, 10K SLOC and up?

8K and growing, not counting comments, blanks.

  1. how does the language fare compared to other ones? do you have
    comparative-productivity numbers you’d be willing to share, vis-a-vis C
    (to be brutal) or Perl (to be a little fairer) or Python?

Wouldn’t have attempted it in any of the above. Our main ruby project is
replacing a C project that was around 50K lines. The ruby version has
comparable performance (using some C), more features, and is much easier
to maintain.

  1. in your experience, how has the language’s novelty affected its
    stability? for comparision, recall the early days of java, and how the
    evolution of the class library made “deprecated” a word that…well,
    let’s just say “sounds like something scatalogical” and leave it at
    that, eh?

Hasn’t been a problem. Bugs come up, but they get fixed very quickly. I
am expecting some minor revisions for compatibility with ruby 1.7.

  1. where do you use Ruby? headless cruncher programs on servers? as Web
    application glue? GUI end-user programs? fast one-off scripty things?

Everything from text mungers up to a high-performance vehicle and
traffic simulation engine with GUI and animation.

  1. what’s your favorite flavor of GUI for Ruby apps? how does using it
    compare with other UI class libraries you’ve tried (e.g., Swing, MFC,
    OWL, Qt, whatever)?

Tk has a nice canvas. FOX has a nice, cross-platform look-and-feel.
Haven’t tried the others.

  1. what development tools do you use all the time for Ruby development?

Nedit, irb.

  1. is Ruby just one of the arrows in your programming quiver, or have
    you made the leap and left other languages behind? if he former, is Ruby
    often your first choice for green-field development?

Can’t quite leave C behind. It’s under the hood in our simulations. Ruby
was the prototype language for that C code, though, and ruby is used to
automatically generate most of that C code.

  1. open-ended essay: what drew you to Ruby? what keeps you working with
    it? what bugs you about it?

Pluses:

Flexible syntax for creating little languages in which ruby code can be
embedded.

Dynamic OO–easy to add methods during execution.

Powerful built-in data types, like String, Hash, and Array, but more
consistent than perl, and unified by things like iterators.

Distinction between variables and values (unlike, say, perl or C).
There’s no direct way (or need) to get a reference to a variable.

Clean, thoughtful design without loads of historical accidents and
backwards compatibility hacks.

Strong community.

Contact info:

···

–
Joel VanderWerf California PATH, UC Berkeley
mailto:vjoel@path.berkeley.edu Ph. (510) 231-9446
http://www.path.berkeley.edu FAX (510) 231-9512

3

hello again folks,

  1. is ruby just a “toy” language? OK, OK, don’t all shout at once – but
    who’s using it for medium-to-large projects, 10K SLOC and up?

Hmm, if I have 10 2-3K projects that interact, is that 20-30K of code?
3-6K.

  1. how does the language fare compared to other ones? do you have
    comparative-productivity numbers you’d be willing to share, vis-a-vis C
    (to be brutal) or Perl (to be a little fairer) or Python?

About 1/3 SLOC than C++.
Speed is mostly a non issue.

  1. in your experience, how has the language’s novelty affected its
    stability? for comparision, recall the early days of java, and how the
    evolution of the class library made “deprecated” a word that…well,
    let’s just say “sounds like something scatalogical” and leave it at
    that, eh?

Seems stable to me. Maybe has affected its acceptance.

  1. where do you use Ruby? headless cruncher programs on servers? as Web
    application glue? GUI end-user programs? fast one-off scripty things?

Processing numerical data generating plots and images.
Automation internal business process.

  1. what’s your favorite flavor of GUI for Ruby apps? how does using it
    compare with other UI class libraries you’ve tried (e.g., Swing, MFC,
    OWL, Qt, whatever)?

Haven’t needed one, but will probably look closely at Fox because
of platform portability and look and feel consistency.

  1. what development tools do you use all the time for Ruby development?

vim, gvim, irb, ri.

  1. is Ruby just one of the arrows in your programming quiver, or have
    you made the leap and left other languages behind? if he former, is Ruby
    often your first choice for green-field development?

Personally for me it is my first choice, but I am not writing commercial software.

  1. open-ended essay: what drew you to Ruby? what keeps you working with
    it? what bugs you about it?

Naturalness (read, limited punctuation) of syntax without trying to be
a wordy natural language.

Easy to read, fun to use.

As fast a Perl

Easy to maintain

Scalable

Easy to read, fun to use.

irb, ri, irb, and did I mention, irb?

Easy to read, fun to use.

note that in order to quote you, i will need a real name, address, and
contact info. if you so request, i will not reveal that information, but

You have my email if you need to contact me.

···

On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 06:33:21AM +0900, Rick Wayne wrote:

–
Jim Freeze

Programming Ruby
def initialize; fun; end
A language with class

4
  1. is ruby just a “toy” language? OK, OK, don’t all shout at once – but
    who’s using it for medium-to-large projects, 10K SLOC and up?

My project is currently 3k, but it’s growing rapidly and will eventually
grow to greater than 10K SLOC.

  1. how does the language fare compared to other ones? do you have
    comparative-productivity numbers you’d be willing to share, vis-a-vis C
    (to be brutal) or Perl (to be a little fairer) or Python?

Empirically, I feel much more productive with Ruby than I ever did with
Perl. This is probably due to the fact that I enjoy programming with Ruby,
so I’m apt to program for longer periods of time and with greater
enthusiasm.

  1. in your experience, how has the language’s novelty affected its
    stability? for comparision, recall the early days of java, and how the
    evolution of the class library made “deprecated” a word that…well,
    let’s just say “sounds like something scatalogical” and leave it at
    that, eh?

I haven’t had any stability issues. I do see bug reports here and there,
but I’ve never had an issue.

  1. where do you use Ruby? headless cruncher programs on servers? as Web
    application glue? GUI end-user programs? fast one-off scripty things?

I use Ruby to perform data aquisition and analysis in an environmental lab.
I gather data from various insturments, perform various calculations,
store results in a database and provide an interface(via modruby) for our users
to browse, manipulate, and build queries on top of the data. I also use it
to generate reports as to the nature of various samples passing through
the lab. My long term goal is to build a full featured laboratory information
management system using modruby as the platform, and I expect to begin work
on this in the next few months.

  1. what’s your favorite flavor of GUI for Ruby apps? how does using it
    compare with other UI class libraries you’ve tried (e.g., Swing, MFC,
    OWL, Qt, whatever)?

Haven’t used one, but Fox looks interesting. I’ve heard that it has issues
with printing though, and those would need to be resolved before I would
consider it a real candidate for a project.

  1. what development tools do you use all the time for Ruby development?

Irb, ruby -r debug, and vim.

  1. is Ruby just one of the arrows in your programming quiver, or have
    you made the leap and left other languages behind? if he former, is Ruby
    often your first choice for green-field development?

Currently, I’m using Ruby for all of my programming tasks in my professional
work. For cpu intensive calculations, I’ll occassionally optimize in C and
prove a ruby wrapper around the C library.

  1. open-ended essay: what drew you to Ruby? what keeps you working with
    it? what bugs you about it?

I was drawn to Ruby initially because I wanted to write modular systems easily
and was quickly becoming disillusioned with Perl’s object oriented
pecularities. I tried Python, and I was turned away by the lack of consistency
in it’s object system, and it’s rigid syntax(not trolling here… just my
subjective feelings on the matter). When I found Ruby, things just seemed to
fall into place. Classes and objects were easy to create. Inheritance was
laid out in a plain and simple manner, and the builtin classes and modules
covered almost all of the ground that Perl’s did. I continue to work with Ruby
because it allows me to get my work done quickly and painlessly. In terms of
complaints, I wish that Ruby provided some facility to compile down to native
C code or at least bytecode(like Python). I know that the native code issue
is extremely difficult with interpreted languages, but if they could find a
way… I also wish that the iterator scoping bug would get fixed once and for
all I.e., a = 0; 1.upto(3) {|a|}; puts a # should produce 0 not 3.

···

Travis Whitton whitton@atlantic.net

p.s., email me if you need more info(i.e., address, etc…)

–
Unix is very user friendly, it’s just picky about who its friends are.

6
  1. where do you use Ruby? headless cruncher programs on servers? as Web
    application glue? GUI end-user programs? fast one-off scripty things?

Anything that doesn’t need C/C++ speed or linkage, or where the
Project manager doesn’t force everyone to use Java or Perl.

  1. what development tools do you use all the time for Ruby development?

Emacs, and RDE; I’ve been waiting for FreeRide.

  1. is Ruby just one of the arrows in your programming quiver, or have
    you made the leap and left other languages behind? if he former, is Ruby
    often your first choice for green-field development?

I left Python for Ruby, for green development I use the target
language and prototype on paper. To be fair, Python is a fantastic
tool, and Guido is an inspiring technologist with great ideas. Python
used to be my favorite language until Python `users’ started following
me around to various groups and publicly faming me, and filling my
inbox with seriously offensive mail. I disassociated myself from the
Python community permanently. It won’t be long before Ruby surpasses
Python on this merit alone. (ooops, the Python thought police will
probably send me hate mail for this, and a flame war is sure in
ensue–beware)

  1. open-ended essay: what drew you to Ruby? what keeps you working with
    it? what bugs you about it?

When I was flamed off the Python group for asking what I felt were
legitimate questions about Python’s obvious weaknesses (every language
has at least one weakness…let’s be honest) and I began to ask simular
questions about Ruby and wasn’t flamed but welcomed; I knew I had
found a language that was destined for greatness and long life.

The Ruby community is the best community you will find anywhere on the
net. You can ask the toughest questions, smear the language, even
make fun of somebody’s mother, and the community will respond
positively.

There are many great technologies to be found, but without great
support, they will all die. Technology, unlike art, must be
maintained to remain a masterpiece. In fact, it’s `in the
maintenance’ that a masterpiece is found. Time is harsh on
technology. Technology, any piece of it, is only as strong as it’s
user base. Ruby’s userbase is one of a kind that you won’t find
anywhere. My only guess is that Ruby attracts developers that already
know several languages and have years of experience under their belts.
Not that Ruby couldn’t be a great first language, but Ruby isn’t the
first language employers are likely to be hiring for. Begininers
probably gravitate to more mainstream tools.

Post off topic here and chances are you’ll recieve an acceptible
response. There is a great depth of knowledge on the Ruby list, and
the community has developed a protocal that is benevolent and humble.
You won’t find the criticisms for being a newbe that you find on other
lists. The group welcomes everybody no matter how silly their
questions.

What bugs me about Ruby, or what keeps me `searching’ for the ideal
contemporary language is that Ruby doesn’t have a complier to either
native code or even byte code like Python, Ocaml, Java, and Lisp. If
Ruby had a native compiler, and this is a tall order given the dynamic
nature of Ruby, I don’t think I would voluntarily use anything else.
Once you write your first Ruby program, you’ll need a baby sitter for
your wife.

note that in order to quote you, i will need a real name, address, and
contact info. if you so request, i will not reveal that information, but
good journalism (not to mention Attila the Editor) requires that i
know who you are before i publish what you say. otherwise, i have to
treat what you say as “background” only.

I’m confident you’ll recieve greater responses than mine, feel free to
e-mail me.

//ed

7

i’ve sent it off the article to the magazine, so the only folks i’ll be
able to immortalize were among the first responders. [OK, so matz got a
little extra time >;-) ]

that said, i continue to be fascinated by this thread, so don’t let me
try and stop you from commenting!

thanks to all of you who contributed, whether or not you wind up quoted
in SD’s august pages (“august” as in “respectable”, the article will be
in the december issue). you have more than proved the point that Ruby’s
community is one of its strongest features.

rw

···

–
systems programmer
ASIG, univ. of WI soil sciences
http://www.soils.wisc.edu/asig/
608-265-9354, fax 265-2595, cell 345-5247

“Otherwise, it’s going to get plenty stupider.” – Jan Koloen

8
  1. is ruby just a “toy” language? OK, OK, don’t all shout at once – but
    who’s using it for medium-to-large projects, 10K SLOC and up?

I’ve just delivered a fully OO ecommerce system that’s about 15KLOC,
if you consider your automated test code part of your production code.
(I do.) It’s definitely not a toy language.

  1. how does the language fare compared to other ones? do you have
    comparative-productivity numbers you’d be willing to share, vis-a-vis C
    (to be brutal) or Perl (to be a little fairer) or Python?

I’ve never been more productive than when I work in Ruby. I attribute
this to two factors:

A. Since Ruby supports object-orientation so well, I can write my
important code as objects and then write automated unit tests to
ensure future changes don’t break code I’ve already written.
B. Ruby has a lot of great syntactical sugar which drastically
reduces how much typing I have to do, especially when compared to
Java, the other OO language I’ve been using heavily. I’ve started
having RSI problems recently, and I notice my wrists are much happier
when I can work in Ruby.

  1. in your experience, how has the language’s novelty affected its
    stability? for comparision, recall the early days of java, and how the
    evolution of the class library made “deprecated” a word that…well,
    let’s just say “sounds like something scatalogical” and leave it at
    that, eh?

There are definitely some packages that I expect to see rewritten in
the future, which may cause compatibility problems. It’s a definite
downside, but I think the big problems aren’t at the core of the
language. Java, for example, has had problems with its collection
classes from the start, and it’s pretty much impossible to write any
sort of app without wanting collection classes. In Ruby, parts of the
CGI module really bug me, but even when you’re writing an ecommerce
system it’s fairly easy to isolate the smelly parts to a few parts of
the code.

  1. where do you use Ruby? headless cruncher programs on servers? as Web
    application glue? GUI end-user programs? fast one-off scripty things?

Web applications with major object-to-relational mapping built-in.

  1. is Ruby just one of the arrows in your programming quiver, or have
    you made the leap and left other languages behind? if he former, is Ruby
    often your first choice for green-field development?

I would like to do 100% Ruby, and hopefully in a few years it’ll be
possible, but currently I have to do work supporting existing systems
in lots of other languages.

I recommend Ruby to small clients who don’t need massive armies of
coders, because it’s not that difficult to find one or two good Ruby
programmers. But I would hesitate to recommend it to a large client
who may need to hire 10 programmers at once. One day, but not today.

  1. open-ended essay: what drew you to Ruby? what keeps you working with
    it? what bugs you about it?

I was programming, for fun, a really gnarly variant of a Markov
Chainer, and I couldn’t do it in Java. I’d programmed myself into a
corner, and I needed lots of changes to add a certain integral aspect
to the code, but I spent so much time satisfying the compiler that I’d
lose track of the change I was trying to make.

I put the project away, and then a few weeks later decided to try in
Ruby. Ruby has the heavy OO-support you need if you want code that’s
robust and well-tested, but because its dynamically typed it’s much
easier to change. You spend more time thinking about your problem and
less time satisfying the compiler. I figured out how to do it in Ruby,
when I hadn’t been able to do it in Java. I was hooked.

( If you want to quote me, feel free to email me for contact info. I
don’t like giving contact info away on a list. )

Francis

9

I’m looking for resources on getting Ruby running on an HP 200lx:
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/prodhome/pt200lx.html
This is an 8086.

From what I’ve learned, Ruby is effectively 386+ because the tools
needed to compile it for a dos box are 386+. I’m still reading up on
gcc’s ability to target different platforms.

I have access to a Windows XP and a Slackware Linux system.

DJGPP, the recommended DOS compiler, is 32bit only. There is some
information regarding compiling under a 16bit environment:
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/16bit/gcc/

gcc claims to run under dos, but when I did some research, they state
that gcc will not compile under any compiler but itself. So I’d have to
install gcc under windows/cygwin/linux… at that point I could just use
gcc and have it’s target be 8086 code.
http://gcc.gnu.org
http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html#dos

I briefly tried cygwin on windows to see if it came with gcc, but my
brief attempt with it came up dry. gcc failed to compile because cygwin
didn’t appear to come with a compiler by default. I’ll have to
re-explore that to download a cygwin prebuilt compiler package, but it’s
probably best that I deal with gcc on the linux box.

This person appears to have ported Ruby, but these are all 386 versions.
http://jarh.hoops.livedoor.com/ruby/
also seen here:
http://www.os.rim.or.jp/~eban/

This old message from the mailing list
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/10130
described this link as having an old version ported over


but this link appears to be broken.

Installing linux on the palm isn’t going to happen. There are two ~8086
flavours of linux that I’m familiar with, and neither of them would be
particularly appropriate for solving this problem. There is a page I
have archived somewhere which gives help on some specific hardware
issues with getting MINIX running on the 200lx… (dealing with using a
pcmcia card instead of a hdd) but that’s not 100%

I’ve done some searches through the mailing list archives, without success.
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/index.shtml

I went looking to see if gcc was 386 only, but I’m not sure. I think I
should just turn on my linux box and rtfm for gcc. =)

10

What bugs me about Ruby, or what keeps me `searching’ for the ideal
contemporary language is that Ruby doesn’t have a complier to either
native code or even byte code like Python, Ocaml, Java, and Lisp. If
Ruby had a native compiler, and this is a tall order given the dynamic
nature of Ruby, I don’t think I would voluntarily use anything else.

Ruby will compile to bytecode in, oh … 3 years? :wink: By that stage, hopefully,
Ruby, Perl and Python will have a useful degree of interoperability via Parrot.
Can’t wait.

I think it is correct to have avoided bytecode so far. That would probably
make the language harder to flex. As it solidifies, it is correct to seek a
more stable target.

Once you write your first Ruby program, you’ll need a baby sitter for
your wife.

Good quote!

//ed

Gavin

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “Edward Wilson” web2ed@yahoo.com

11

Hello Edward,

Wednesday, September 25, 2002, 9:02:08 AM, you wrote:

What bugs me about Ruby, or what keeps me `searching’ for the ideal
contemporary language is that Ruby doesn’t have a complier to either
native code or even byte code like Python, Ocaml, Java, and Lisp. If
Ruby had a native compiler, and this is a tall order given the dynamic
nature of Ruby, I don’t think I would voluntarily use anything else.

purpose? speed/ciphering sources/giving-one-executable/reliability of strict language?

Once you write your first Ruby program, you’ll need a baby sitter for
your wife.

cool! :slight_smile:

···

–
Best regards,
Bulat mailto:bulatz@integ.ru

12

Hi,

When I was flamed off the Python group for asking what I felt were
legitimate questions about Python’s obvious weaknesses (every language
has at least one weakness…let’s be honest) and I began to ask simular
questions about Ruby and wasn’t flamed but welcomed; I knew I had
found a language that was destined for greatness and long life.

Really? That did happen in a technical discussion group such as
Python? I am glad I have switched to Ruby.

What bugs me about Ruby, or what keeps me `searching’ for the ideal
contemporary language is that Ruby doesn’t have a complier to either
native code or even byte code like Python, Ocaml, Java, and Lisp. If
Ruby had a native compiler, and this is a tall order given the dynamic
nature of Ruby, I don’t think I would voluntarily use anything else.

Do you have any experience with rb2c, as suggested by Bulat? I haven’t
tried it myself.

Regards,

Bill

···

Edward Wilson web2ed@yahoo.com wrote:

13

we’ve been doing a fair bit with Cocoon lately – data in SQL or XML,
documents in XML, transform via XSL stylesheets on the fly to HTML, PDF,
whatever. very cool stuff, IMHO worth a look if you have data streams
onto which you want to trowel some Maybelline.

the only problem is that it’s all Java-based. i was kind of hoping to
build support for Ruby as a scripting language (cocoon has its own
JSP-like-but-better java scripting), but somehow i’ve been busy with my
REAL job(s).

of course, while cocoon is a full-fledged XML publishing platform, you
can invoke the 80/20 rule and get much of the same power in ruby, just
ram XML through your favorite XSLT engine.

rw

···

On Tue, 2002-09-24 at 14:01, Travis Whitton wrote:

the lab. My long term goal is to build a full featured laboratory information
management system using modruby as the platform, and I expect to begin work
on this in the next few months.

–
systems programmer
ASIG, univ. of WI soil sciences
http://www.soils.wisc.edu/asig/
608-265-9354, fax 265-2595, cell 345-5247

“Otherwise, it’s going to get plenty stupider.” – Jan Koloen

14

What do you mean by “[your] own syntax”?
Have you changed Ruby’s parser or (I suspect) written a preprocessor?
Could you elaborate a little more on the parts of the syntax you didn’t like?

I’ve been lately thinking of the coolness of having several different
syntaxes for the same underlying “language”, especially if some tool is
able to translate between them… Imagine having a Python-esque syntax
w/ significant spaces in Ruby. That could for sure lure some pythonists :wink:

I think many people care too much about syntax, as it’s only a
superficial feature of the language you can quickly get used to. I’d be
great to preemptively abort any further flamewars on such shallow topics
as “syntax by indentation rules!!!” or " '() suck!".

···

On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 04:41:29AM +0900, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:

Bugs :

  • Some of the syntax, which is not as short or as minimum as
    in Python. But I have written my own syntax for Ruby.

–
_ _

__ __ | | ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __
'_ \ / | __/ __| '_ _ \ / ` | ’ \
) | (| | |__ \ | | | | | (| | | | |
.__/ _,|_|/| || ||_,|| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

How do I bind a computer to an NIS server?
Use a rope?
– Seen on #Debian

15

That’s a fascinating idea… at first I thought
it might be implausible, but then I remembered
that Windows 3.0 (but not 3.1) will actually
run on this platform.

Hey, I was about to sell my old HP… but if
you accomplish this, it might be just enough
reason (read: excuse) to keep it. :slight_smile:

OT: I don’t suppose you know how to get a
Sundisk card to work properly under Windows ME?
I’ve been trying to suck the old data off onto
my laptop. Lost my connectivity cable long ago.

Cheers,
Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “rack1” rack1@myrealbox.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 12:25 AM
Subject: DOS 16bit Ruby

I’m looking for resources on getting Ruby running on an HP 200lx:
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/prodhome/pt200lx.html
This is an 8086.

16

William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:

Hi,

When I was flamed off the Python group for asking what I felt were
legitimate questions about Python’s obvious weaknesses (every language
has at least one weakness…let’s be honest) and I began to ask simular
questions about Ruby and wasn’t flamed but welcomed; I knew I had
found a language that was destined for greatness and long life.

Really? That did happen in a technical discussion group such as
Python? I am glad I have switched to Ruby.

I gritted my teeth and was going to let Mr. Wilson’s slander go by but
now this is too much. He attacked Python in a thread “Is Python Dead”.
Then he claimed that Java is useless. Then he moved to the Ruby
newgroup and said that “Python is useless for most practical development
tasks.”

And then, you might think he would let it drop, but he instead claims
that the Python world started a jihad against him.

I don’t want to start a meta-thread. Judge for yourselves:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=mailman.994093384.6431.python-list%40python.org&rnum=10&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dedward%2Bwilson%2Bpython%2Bcomp.lang.python%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Dmailman.994093384.6431.python-list%2540python.org%26rnum%3D10

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=3zj57.20202%24sx2.1088995%40e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dedward%2Bwilson%2Bpython%2Buseless%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3D3zj57.20202%2524sx2.1088995%2540e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com%26rnum%3D1

Paul Prescod

···

Edward Wilson web2ed@yahoo.com wrote:

17

Hello Mauricio,

Thursday, September 26, 2002, 4:22:05 PM, you wrote:

I think many people care too much about syntax, as it’s only a
superficial feature of the language you can quickly get used to. I’d be

well, you can try to write programs in C using ruby’s readme.ext
excellent guide :slight_smile:

···

–
Best regards,
Bulat mailto:bulatz@integ.ru

18

Hi –

···

On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Mauricio [unknown-8bit] Fernández wrote:

I’ve been lately thinking of the coolness of having several different
syntaxes for the same underlying “language”, especially if some tool is
able to translate between them… Imagine having a Python-esque syntax
w/ significant spaces in Ruby. That could for sure lure some pythonists :wink:

Possibly, but even better is to create new Rubyists :slight_smile:

David

–
David Alan Black | Register for RubyConf 2002!
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net | November 1-3
work: blackdav@shu.edu | Seattle, WA, USA
Web: http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav | http://www.rubyconf.com

19

Aha, someone caught my post. Yes, I love Ruby very much, but I should
take care of my hands and eyes too. One thing that I miss from Python is
its syntax terseness.

You are absolutely correct regarding the preprocessor. As I don’t have
the capability (for now) of writing/changing a parser, I just wrote a
“SRuby to Ruby” translator. (Probably SRuby stands for “small Ruby” or
“subset of Ruby”.) It is similar to Python syntax, without the ending
colons. It is for my own experimentation only. So far I have been
enjoying writing

(regular Ruby code)

#begin_rbs --------------------------------------

class MyClass
    def initialize (obj)
        if obj.nil?: puts "warning"
    def do_something (arg)
        while true
            do_1 ()
            do_2 ()
class AnotherClass
    ....

#end_rbs ----------------------------------------

(regular Ruby code)

You see, the translator works only between “#begin_rbs” and
“#end_rbs”, so I can mix and match between the Ruby and SRuby
syntax. My “rbs2rb.rb” translates a .rbs file to a .rb file. For any
syntax error, I just examine the resulting .rb file.

I think I have minimized my typing (good for my hands) and more easily
find the code blocks (good for my eyes), because as in English documents,
as someone has pointed out previously, there is no closing tag in a
paragraph, but only an opening tag, which is usually the reverse-indenting
of programming languages.

Regards,

Bill

···

============================================================================
Mauricio Fern?ndez batsman.geo@yahoo.com wrote:

What do you mean by “[your] own syntax”?
Have you changed Ruby’s parser or (I suspect) written a preprocessor?
Could you elaborate a little more on the parts of the syntax you didn’t like?

I’ve been lately thinking of the coolness of having several different
syntaxes for the same underlying “language”, especially if some tool is
able to translate between them… Imagine having a Python-esque syntax
w/ significant spaces in Ruby. That could for sure lure some pythonists :wink:

I think many people care too much about syntax, as it’s only a
superficial feature of the language you can quickly get used to. I’d be
great to preemptively abort any further flamewars on such shallow topics
as “syntax by indentation rules!!!” or " '() suck!".

20

You also may want to look at this project:

http://exerb.sourceforge.jp/index.en.html

It compiles EVERYTHING (interpreter, extensions, source) into a single
EXE.

···

-----Original Message-----
From: William Djaja Tjokroaminata [mailto:billtj@y.glue.umd.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 9:03 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: call for commentary: review of Ruby for a
magazine (long, sorry!)

Hi,

Edward Wilson web2ed@yahoo.com wrote:

When I was flamed off the Python group for asking what I felt were
legitimate questions about Python’s obvious weaknesses
(every language
has at least one weakness…let’s be honest) and I began to
ask simular
questions about Ruby and wasn’t flamed but welcomed; I knew I had
found a language that was destined for greatness and long life.

Really? That did happen in a technical discussion group such
as Python? I am glad I have switched to Ruby.

What bugs me about Ruby, or what keeps me `searching’ for the ideal
contemporary language is that Ruby doesn’t have a complier
to either
native code or even byte code like Python, Ocaml, Java, and
Lisp. If
Ruby had a native compiler, and this is a tall order given
the dynamic
nature of Ruby, I don’t think I would voluntarily use anything else.

Do you have any experience with rb2c, as suggested by Bulat?
I haven’t tried it myself.