Hi all,
Here is an article about Programming Languages that are Loved.
http://bluebones.net/news/default.asp?action=view_story&story_id=81
It shows Ruby is Top 1.
But it warns that Ruby’s outstanding result should not be taken too
seriously.
Refer to http://bluebones.net/jobfight/ also.
What do you think about this?
Park Heesob
It certainly reflects my preferences. [disclaimer: the following is my
personal opinion. I do not claim that anyone else thinks this way, or
that they should].
What has kept me so far in ruby is that it’s a nice language. It
makes sense. There are no surprises. I can think of a problem, and a
non-convoluted way of solving it in Ruby. Which is perhaps why it’s
(apparently) so loved. Cheers!
-CWS
On Wed, 5 May 2004 21:48:59 +0900, Park Heesob phasis68@kornet.net wrote:
Hi all,
Here is an article about Programming Languages that are Loved.
http://bluebones.net/news/default.asp?action=view_story&story_id=81It shows Ruby is Top 1.
But it warns that Ruby’s outstanding result should not be taken too
seriously.Refer to http://bluebones.net/jobfight/ also.
What do you think about this?
Park Heesob
In article c7aklt$8gs$1@news1.kornet.net,
Park Heesob phasis68@kornet.net wrote:
Hi all,
Here is an article about Programming Languages that are Loved.
http://bluebones.net/news/default.asp?action=view_story&story_id=81It shows Ruby is Top 1.
But it warns that Ruby’s outstanding result should not be taken too
seriously.Refer to http://bluebones.net/jobfight/ also.
What do you think about this?
Well I know I love Ruby (the programming language :).
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.
It’s also rather odd that assembler comes in at #6 most loved (above such
notables as java, perl, scheme, C++).
Phil
Phil Tomson wrote:
Well I know I love Ruby (the programming language :).
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.
…now I know women like jewelry almost to the insane level we love the
language, but I hope he was thinking primarily of people writing to say
they love someone called Ruby. 
–
([ Kent Dahl ]/)_ ~ [ http://www.pvv.org/~kentda/ ]/~
))_student_/(( _d L b_/ Master of Science in Technology )
( __õ|õ// ) ) Industrial economics and technology management (
_/ö____/ (_engineering.discipline=Computer::Technology)
In article c7aklt$8gs$1@news1.kornet.net,
http://bluebones.net/news/default.asp?action=view_story&story_id=81
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.
Or the band (‘Paraffin’ is probably on a p2p near you I expect).
Wonder where Les Rankine is these days?
Park Heesob phasis68@kornet.net wrote:
–
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
– Walt Disney
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
ptkwt@aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) wrote in message news:c7b5mj088t@enews3.newsguy.com…
It’s also rather odd that assembler comes in at #6 most loved (above such
notables as java, perl, scheme, C++).
Speaking as someone for whom this is true, one USES Java, but one
doesn’t LOVE Java. Java is like a 1996 Toyota 4Runner. Not very
pretty, but not as ugly as some. A terrible gas guzzler, but pretty
practical. Unreliable, but cheap. And while it isn’t very
comfortable to drive, it usually gets you to where you want to go.
The major difference is that Toyota didn’t invest as many resources
(relatively) into marketting the 4Runner as Sun did into marketting
Java.
Java was a good idea; it just got bloated, and the language failed to
evolve (1.5 has some nice new language features). Plus, the bytecode
thing turned out to be less of a selling point than was expected. Sun
did an outstanding job marketting Java; if Java had been an
open-source project with no commercial entity behind it, I’d bet that
it wouldn’t be even as wide-spread as Ruby is.
Although I make my living off Java programming, I have to say that if
you think about it, Java’s main failing is mediocrity. If your main
criteria is speed, are you going to use Java? Probably not; C’s still
your best bet. If your main criteria is rapid development, are you
going to use Java? Again, probably not. Python or Ruby are much
better. If you’re main criteria is reliable, provable code, are you
going to choose Java? Nope. You want a functional language, like
OCaml or Haskell, or a language designed for provability, like Ada.
However, Java does all of these things moderately well; it is more
“easy” to program in than Ada or most functional languages; it is
faster than Python or Ruby; it has better error checking than C. And,
incidentally, it has a built-in GUI toolkit that is cross-platform,
which is nice to have. But it is, fundamentally, a mediocre language;
it does nothing exceptionally. As a result, you’ll find few Java
programmers who actually “love” Java; most like it well enough and put
up with it because the alternatives are worse or are non-starters for
other reasons.
All of which makes me want to scream: Where are the Ruby jobs? Why
must so many of us wear the Cruel Shoes of Java? Ruby needs a killer
app, like an interpreter in Mozilla so that web designers can script
with Ruby instead of Javascript. It needs a compiler, to satisfy the
need for speed. It would help if it had a decent, standard
cross-platform GUI. It’d be really nice if there was some mechanism
for type checking Ruby code. Most of all, it needs some monster
organization willing to throw a lot of marketting weight behind it, or
at least pay for a dozen people to work on developing it full time.
You know what the real bugger is, though? All of this server-side
processing that Java does. I mean, that’s Java’s real niche, at the
moment. Desktop applications are a fairly small percentage of the
Java apps in the market. And yet, you can build web services faster,
more reliably, more easily in Ruby than in Java… and the people
using the service would never know. That’s what really torques me.
Yeah, I like Java well enough. But it takes a language like Ruby to
inspire true love.
In article c7b98v$4b7$1@orkan.itea.ntnu.no,
Kent Dahl kentda+news@stud.ntnu.no wrote:
Phil Tomson wrote:
Well I know I love Ruby (the programming language :).
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.…now I know women like jewelry almost to the insane level we love the
language, but I hope he was thinking primarily of people writing to say
they love someone called Ruby.
Well, probably 
But it could be either one.
Couldn’t the Python results also be tainted? Someone might say they
love their python (snake), I suppose.
Phil
In article 83173408.0405051506.5db85fe6@posting.google.com,
ptkwt@aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) wrote in message
news:c7b5mj088t@enews3.newsguy.com…It’s also rather odd that assembler comes in at #6 most loved (above such
notables as java, perl, scheme, C++).
All of which makes me want to scream: Where are the Ruby jobs?
Yeah, mine’s quickly coming to an end… I must say I’ve been lucky, I
guess, I’ve managed to get paid to program in Ruby off and on over the
last 3 years. My current gig ends at the end of the quarter - I’ve been
fortunate to be coding primarily in Ruby for the last 3 months or so.
I think this has been brought up before by others, but I’d be willing to
work for less $ (don’t spread this around too much to work on a Ruby
project than I would be willing to work for doing the
equivilent Perl|Java|C++ project - I’d be willing to trade some cash for
the enjoyment and ease of coding in Ruby. I suspect there are others here
who would make that trade too. So maybe instead of offshoring, corporations
should figure out what languages people would code in for less$ if given
the opportunity (also, consider the productivity gain they would get by
using Ruby)
Last week I went for a job interview for a Perl/C/C++ job. One of the
interviewers saw that I had done a lot of Perl (including OOPerl) in the
past, so he started asking me a lot of Perl questions. I haven’t touched
Perl in 3 years (about the same time I found Ruby, what a coincidence) and
it’s amazing how much your forget in that time - I really couldn’t remember
much about Perl (“What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose
to forget…”).
He asked what the difference between ‘my’ and ‘local’ was and all I could
remember was that it’s backward from what it sounds like and that you usually
use ‘my’ and rarely use ‘local’ and that ‘local’ is some sort of kludge.
Most of the questions he asked about Perl pertained to some sort of special
case/kludgey part of the language. I kept thinking to myself that No Sane
Person Would Really Use Perl for any serious project. He asked why I had
moved to Ruby and I basically didn’t hold back my feelings about Perl. I’m
sure I didn’t get that job, and even though I’ll be needing work in a
couple of months, I’m kind of releived…
So, are we ruined by Ruby?
Why
must so many of us wear the Cruel Shoes of Java? Ruby needs a killer
app, like an interpreter in Mozilla so that web designers can script
with Ruby instead of Javascript.
That would be very nice. Maybe it’s a matter of ‘converting’ the right
people in the Mozilla project.
It needs a compiler, to satisfy the
need for speed. It would help if it had a decent, standard
cross-platform GUI. It’d be really nice if there was some mechanism
for type checking Ruby code. Most of all, it needs some monster
organization willing to throw a lot of marketting weight behind it, or
at least pay for a dozen people to work on developing it full time.
If only I had a million (or 2) dollars laying around…
Phil
Sean Russell ser@germane-software.com wrote:
On Thu, 6 May 2004 03:58:47 +0900, Dick Davies
rasputnik@hellooperator.net wrote (more or less):
- Phil Tomson ptkwt@aracnet.com [0509 18:09]:
In article c7aklt$8gs$1@news1.kornet.net,
http://bluebones.net/news/default.asp?action=view_story&story_id=81
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.Or the band (‘Paraffin’ is probably on a p2p near you I expect).
Wonder where Les Rankine is these days?
Dumfriesshire, as I recall.
There was a new Ruby album out within the last year or so.
I interviewed her a good few years back - when she was on the Paraffin
tour, but the web-page for the interview is no longer with us. 
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk
Park Heesob phasis68@kornet.net wrote:
Dick Davies rasputnik@hellooperator.net wrote in message news:20040505185844.GC29946@lb.tenfour…
Or the band (‘Paraffin’ is probably on a p2p near you I expect).
Wonder where Les Rankine is these days?
Dunno, but I really like Ruby’s rendition of “Thank Heaven For Little
Girls”, which appeared in a Mountain Dew commercial a few years ago.
AFAIK it was recorded specifically for the commercial; I haven’t been
able to find a complete version of the song anywhere, nor evidence for
its existance. I do have an MPEG file of the commercial, though.
It seems like most bad results could be filtered out by requiring
another programming language to be mentioned, or the phrase
“programming language”, or some such. Making a more complex search, you
would narrow the results.
–Mark
On May 5, 2004, at 12:23 PM, Phil Tomson wrote:
In article c7b98v$4b7$1@orkan.itea.ntnu.no,
Kent Dahl kentda+news@stud.ntnu.no wrote:Phil Tomson wrote:
Well I know I love Ruby (the programming language :).
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people
could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.…now I know women like jewelry almost to the insane level we love
the
language, but I hope he was thinking primarily of people writing to
say
they love someone called Ruby.Well, probably
Couldn’t the Python results also be tainted? Someone might say they
love their python (snake), I suppose.
In article c7b98v$4b7$1@orkan.itea.ntnu.no,
Phil Tomson wrote:
Well I know I love Ruby (the programming language :).
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.…now I know women like jewelry almost to the insane level we love the
language, but I hope he was thinking primarily of people writing to say
they love someone called Ruby.Well, probably
Couldn’t the Python results also be tainted? Someone might say they
love their python (snake), I suppose.
Wahey!
But remember the strings are ‘i love x’ not ‘i love my x’…
Maybe a lot of people like exotic cuisine?
Kent Dahl kentda+news@stud.ntnu.no wrote:
–
Patageometry, n.:
The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
under brain transplants.
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
Phil Tomson wrote:
Couldn’t the Python results also be tainted? Someone might say they
love their python (snake), I suppose.
The python results lose about 48 hits with “-monty”. I just hope Monty
is not the name of some python app.
Last week I went for a job interview for a Perl/C/C++ job. One of the
interviewers saw that I had done a lot of Perl (including OOPerl) in the
past, so he started asking me a lot of Perl questions.
Funnily enough, I had an interview where I got asked some simple Perl
questions, which were easy enough to answer.
Then I got a real beauty: ‘So, what would you say is wrong with Perl?’
20 minutes of rant later, the interviewer was asking about where he
could get Ruby.
I start next week.
–
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
ptkwt@aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) wrote in message news:c7c3sk01odk@enews2.newsguy.com…
Yeah, mine’s quickly coming to an end… I must say I’ve been lucky, I
Bummer. Too bad we all can’t band together and start a Ruby Solutions
company
I think this has been brought up before by others, but I’d be willing to
work for less $ (don’t spread this around too much
project than I would be willing to work for doing the
Heck, yeah. What clients don’t understand yet is that they’d be
getting more for their money.
Hm. Of all the things I said Ruby “needs”, what would be the most
useful is improved code validation tools, like a type checker. People
tend to not trust scripting languages for large projects; personally,
I blame Javascript and VB for giving all other scripting languages a
bad name.
who would make that trade too. So maybe instead of offshoring, corporations
should figure out what languages people would code in for less$ if given
the opportunity (also, consider the productivity gain they would get by
using Ruby)
Unfortunately, it is often a case of someone who thinks they know
enough about architecture issues making the decision that the project
needs to be done in one language or another. In a lot of cases, the
decisision is actually based on good requirements. As much as I love
Ruby, I wouldn’t think of it first if I was trying to architect a
GUI-heavy client. Additionally, Ruby isn’t “well known”, and
obscurity can do a lot of damage to a language when it is being
considered for a project. Where’s the support if something goes
wrong? Finally, there are the performance issues. Often, it is
reasonable to choose a single language with decent performance rather
than choose to use two languages, one for glue, and one for
performance-critical code.
So, are we ruined by Ruby?
I know I’m spoiled.
must so many of us wear the Cruel Shoes of Java? Ruby needs a killer
app, like an interpreter in Mozilla so that web designers can script
with Ruby instead of Javascript.That would be very nice. Maybe it’s a matter of ‘converting’ the right
people in the Mozilla project.
Maybe. I mean, it wouldn’t be widespread unless other browsers
started supporting it (IE, in particular), but it would be nice. I
think if somebody submitted a patch to Mozilla that enabled this
support, it might be kindly received. Perhaps not.
— SER
ptkwt@aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) wrote in message news:c7c3sk01odk@enews2.newsguy.com…
Yeah, mine’s quickly coming to an end… I must say I’ve been lucky, I
Bummer. Too bad we all can’t band together and start a Ruby Solutions
company
I think this has been brought up before by others, but I’d be willing to
work for less $ (don’t spread this around too much
project than I would be willing to work for doing the
Heck, yeah. What clients don’t understand yet is that they’d be
getting more for their money.
Hm. Of all the things I said Ruby “needs”, what would be the most
useful is improved code validation tools, like a type checker. People
tend to not trust scripting languages for large projects; personally,
I blame Javascript and VB for giving all other scripting languages a
bad name.
who would make that trade too. So maybe instead of offshoring, corporations
should figure out what languages people would code in for less$ if given
the opportunity (also, consider the productivity gain they would get by
using Ruby)
Unfortunately, it is often a case of someone who thinks they know
enough about architecture issues making the decision that the project
needs to be done in one language or another. In a lot of cases, the
decisision is actually based on good requirements. As much as I love
Ruby, I wouldn’t think of it first if I was trying to architect a
GUI-heavy client. Additionally, Ruby isn’t “well known”, and
obscurity can do a lot of damage to a language when it is being
considered for a project. Where’s the support if something goes
wrong? Finally, there are the performance issues. Often, it is
reasonable to choose a single language with decent performance rather
than choose to use two languages, one for glue, and one for
performance-critical code.
So, are we ruined by Ruby?
I know I’m spoiled.
must so many of us wear the Cruel Shoes of Java? Ruby needs a killer
app, like an interpreter in Mozilla so that web designers can script
with Ruby instead of Javascript.That would be very nice. Maybe it’s a matter of ‘converting’ the right
people in the Mozilla project.
Maybe. I mean, it wouldn’t be widespread unless other browsers
started supporting it (IE, in particular), but it would be nice. I
think if somebody submitted a patch to Mozilla that enabled this
support, it might be kindly received. Perhaps not.
— SER
On Thu, 6 May 2004 03:58:47 +0900, Dick Davies
rasputnik@hellooperator.net wrote (more or less):
- Phil Tomson ptkwt@aracnet.com [0509 18:09]:
In article c7aklt$8gs$1@news1.kornet.net,
http://bluebones.net/news/default.asp?action=view_story&story_id=81
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.Or the band (‘Paraffin’ is probably on a p2p near you I expect).
Wonder where Les Rankine is these days?
Dumfriesshire, as I recall.
There was a new Ruby album out within the last year or so.
I interviewed her a good few years back - when she was on the Paraffin
tour, but the web-page for the interview is no longer with us.
I had a thing for chicks with blue hair and biker boots at the time, so I was
in heaven Are we still after a mascot? Beats a penguin
Big change from SilverFish, though.
Is this what brought you to the list then?
Now I think of it my first Leenux box back in the 90s was ruby.mine.nu,
and I think I probably heard of the language after googling for the band
(it certainly wasn’t word of mouth anyway, none of the geeks I know ever
used it).
See, if they’d been marketed as well as Pe[a]rl Jam, the history of scripting
languages might have been very different…
Park Heesob phasis68@kornet.net wrote:
–
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
– Ed Howe
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
If the same search could be done within the language specific newsgroups:
comp.lang.xxx… could give some more trustworthy results?
BTW: I love Ruby more than any other thing I have loved earlier.
I expect to extend my relationship with Ruby in the future, getting married,
having children… etc. Ruby is like Britney Spears.
Mark Hubbart discord@mac.com wrote:
On May 5, 2004, at 12:23 PM, Phil Tomson wrote:
In article c7b98v$4b7$1@orkan.itea.ntnu.no,
Kent Dahl kentda+news@stud.ntnu.no wrote:Phil Tomson wrote:
Well I know I love Ruby (the programming language :).
He seems to imply that the Ruby results are tainted because people
could
be saying that they love Ruby the gem.…now I know women like jewelry almost to the insane level we love
the
language, but I hope he was thinking primarily of people writing to
say
they love someone called Ruby.Well, probably
Couldn’t the Python results also be tainted? Someone might say they
love their python (snake), I suppose.It seems like most bad results could be filtered out by requiring
another programming language to be mentioned, or the phrase
“programming language”, or some such. Making a more complex search, you
would narrow the results.
–
Simon Strandgaard
Dick Davies wrote:
- Phil Tomson ptkwt@aracnet.com [0554 02:54]:
Last week I went for a job interview for a Perl/C/C++ job. One of the
interviewers saw that I had done a lot of Perl (including OOPerl) in the
past, so he started asking me a lot of Perl questions.Funnily enough, I had an interview where I got asked some simple Perl
questions, which were easy enough to answer.Then I got a real beauty: ‘So, what would you say is wrong with Perl?’
About a month ago I interviewed a number of candidates for a Java
developer position. Aside from the usual tech questions, I asked them
what they didn’t like about the language. Most of them had a hard time
thinking of anything. Those that knew and used more than three
programing languages were more likely to list issues and annoyances, but
most of the candidates had little to say about it.
This led me to believe that they either did not know the language all
that well, or they don’t think critically about the tools they use, or
they were not inclined to speak up when they saw a problem with
something. None good.
And this is not a jab at Java; I would think that anybody deeply
familiar with a language would have a few things things they disliked
about it, even if, on the whole, they loved the language.
James
that’s awesome!
i have a similar tale: we operate in panic mode most of the time and i often
get requests like ‘can you do this in 3 hours, if not it’s no good…’. once,
when a request like that was made, i answered as honestly as i could by
saying, ‘if i do it ruby, yes. if i do it in perl, no.’. needless to say the
task got done and i’ve been using ruby for every request since. i think phil
was right on when he estimated the productivity savings - i get 4 or 5 times
over c–, 3 or 4 over java, and 1 to 3 over perl. my point is this: you may
have a ‘ruby job’ already! depending on your situation it may not be selfish
at all to convince your managers to let you use ruby - in my case it’s a
win/win situation because i’m happier and they get more out of me. i’ve given
three presentations to management in the past and always got the green light -
as far as i’m concerned if your not in a niche that simply requires
fortran, c, or whatever it’s a pretty easy sell. in fact, in my environment
i’d assert that anyone NOT using ruby (or perhaps python if that floats your
boat) is wasting tax payer’s money.
this makes me think - there is a lot of presentaion material out there
praising ruby (matz’s slides, pragmatic programmer stuff, personal
presentations). what about pooling resources and putting together something
really slick and professional and putting it up on ruby-lang for people to
use? postgresql is attempting to do this… seems like a good idea. if only
we could distill _why’s book…
thoughts??
-a
On Thu, 6 May 2004, Dick Davies wrote:
Funnily enough, I had an interview where I got asked some simple Perl
questions, which were easy enough to answer.Then I got a real beauty: ‘So, what would you say is wrong with Perl?’
20 minutes of rant later, the interviewer was asking about where he
could get Ruby.I start next week.
EMAIL :: Ara [dot] T [dot] Howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
PHONE :: 303.497.6469
ADDRESS :: E/GC2 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305-3328
URL :: Solar-Terrestrial Physics Data | NCEI
TRY :: for l in ruby perl;do $l -e “print "\x3a\x2d\x29\x0a"”;done
===============================================================================