Factors to consider for choosing Ruby?

In article <1122967180.462776.134970@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,

Hi all,

At work I have received an assignment where I have to parse textfiles
containing textual description of user interfaces and generate C++ code
to create the GUI.
I decided to try out Ruby for this job and I never regretted. It does
an excellent job parsing the textfiles. This is the first program I'm
doing in Ruby and I've already fallen in love :slight_smile:

Ahhh, another Ruby-smitten programmer. Welcome!

Now I'd like to use Ruby more in the future and I wonder how wide the
scope of Ruby is? Ruby has proven to be an ultimate candidate for
textual problems and I'd like to know if it's useful in writing larger
applications.

Currently I program mostly in C++ because I can do anything with it.
I'd like to do more in Ruby.

When should I choose Ruby? When should I stick to C++?

Use Ruby for programs you need to get done quickly and where performance
isn't an issue.

Use C++ for programs that need to run fast with schedule being less of an
issue.

You can mix to two as well and use C++ for the fast bits and Ruby for
everything else. You can even define classes that have some methods
defined in C++ (for performance reasons) and others defined in Ruby. Look
into Swig (http://swig.org) for wrapping existing C++ code.

You'll probably find that you can implement 80% of your functionality in
Ruby and 20% in C++.

That said, though, I used to be rather negative about C++, but now with a
lot of the newer template programming techniques (check out the C++
Templates book or the one on template metaprogramming) as well as the
advent of the Boost libraries I'm finding my forays into C++ interesting
again.

Phil

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francisrammeloo@hotmail.com <francisrammeloo@hotmail.com> wrote: