Python 25 times as popular as Ruby !?

ruby-talk
41

An idea I was wondering was if it might be possible to link unit tests
and RDoc.

It would work like this:

  • The developer creates unit tests for their class, starting with the
    simplest usages and then testing each facet of the code with unit
    tests.

That’s an excellent idea – it would probably promote init testing as
well as documentation. That’s a very good thing.

  • RDoc then processes these unit tests, formatting and indexing them,
    and includes them with the final documentation.

I think this approach could make it easier for class writers to
produce extensive examples whithout much additional work.

I agree. I just jumped into unit testing, and rdoc is next on my list of
tools to learn. (I’d really love to help with the ruby-doc projects,
because the docs -are- what made me use PHP for so long. It’s truly a
language for people with no memory – the docs are great, and everything
else guessable. Terribly easy to write bad code in, but that just
encourages one-off scripts, but I digress.)

I’m finding that as I work with Ruby, examples are hard to come by. I
pull out the source to many libraries to read how they work. Some are
informative – net/http is great – some are hard to understand, like
webrick – but I’d really like docs so I don’t -have- to read the source
and guess how the library is best used.

Ari

42

Quoting,

Ruby is designed with a different goal I think, and I’m glad it is.
Would you be content if >> every kid in the block used Ruby? Where’s
your edge then? :slight_smile:

Im not 100% sure that it really is the point. PHP is more of a
‘web-devotee’ language by principles, what neither Perl nor Ruby are.
Ruby is object oriented, what Perl isnt. So, they are not oriented for
the same public at all.Thus, again, not sure if the ‘popularity goal’
argument is valid, if at all ? :slight_smile:

Cheers

Rove Monteux

David Garamond wrote:

···

Robert wrote:

Peter Hickman wrote:

Maybe I should go over to comp.lang.python and see if you have
written ‘Perl is 25 times as popular as Python’. Which of course you
should write as Perl has vastly more libraries of high quality
software than python.

Go Perl! Ooops. Sorry. :wink:

But Perl is dead. Go PHP! :slight_smile:

Seriously, some software are “destined” (read: designed) to be popular
and some are not. PHP and Python, for example, are designed with the
goal to be easy to learn and comes with as many batteries as it can.
Thus it will be used by as many people as it can.

Ruby is designed with a different goal I think, and I’m glad it is.
Would you be content if every kid in the block used Ruby? Where’s your
edge then? :slight_smile:

–
Rove Monteux
Systems Administrator

rove.monteux@fluid-rock.com

43

what about putting it on rubyforge… but in the code snippets section
?

···

il Mon, 2 Feb 2004 23:34:43 +0900, Gavin Sinclair gsinclair@soyabean.com.au ha scritto::

I started one such effort with submissions from the Sydney group,
which was never really advertised. It was based on PLEAC (which is
based on the Perl cookbook). I didn’t like the PLEAC “code only”
approach, so thought another effort was justified (besides, all code
is sharable).

My effort has been dead for ages. I’d love to donate it to a good
home. Left alone, one day I would probably make a RubyForge project
out of it, but I’m waaaay too busy on other Ruby stuff to think about
that atm.

44

Nathaniel Talbott nathaniel@talbott.ws wrote in message
news:013A62D9-5595-11D8-99FF-000A95CD7A8E@talbott.ws…

The next time they ask you about the bus, you’re welcome to give them
my email address :slight_smile:

:wink: Are you still in Oregon?

Nope… but I still have in-laws there. I’m finishing up my current
(Ruby) project, and am looking for new ones, and the top two places I’m
looking are North Carolina (my current location) and Oregon. Even if I
telecommute, it’s great to get work that occasionally brings me close
to family. So if you have any Oregon work, we should talk :slight_smile:

Seriously, I know so many excellent programmers that would jump at
the chance to get paid for Ruby coding. I don’t think buses (or trains
for that matter) are really a problem.

I totally agree and I would add that any good programmer that has
experience in other languages and some OO background can pick up Ruby
and be productive in a few days.

The only qualifier I would make, from personal experience, is that a
good programmer coming to Ruby will still be missing two important
components after a few days - he won’t be hooked up to the community,
and he won’t be aware of the available libraries. Oh, and if he hasn’t
used a language with closures, he’ll miss a significant portion of
Ruby’s power until they click with him. It sounds like a sales pitch,
but I would say that it is critical for a commercial project to at
least have a ruby expert on call, if not on the team. What’s a Ruby
expert? Hard to quantify, but I’d say a minimum of one
publicly-available Ruby project, and one year of reading the ruby-talk
list.

I was talking about management
perceptions of the language. We both would agree that these
perceptions are inaccurate, but they’re still a barrier.

Perceptions are, indeed, tough. I was just talking to a friend (one of
those great programmers who would love to be doing Ruby), and he was
saying that the consulting company he works for has 12 potential
clients that don’t care what technology is used to implement their
projects. So of course, the salesman is recommending… .NET??? The
salesman’s justification is that he wants to use the best thing for his
clients, and his perception is that C# and .NET are the best. How do we
deal with that? I’m not sure, but I know that the more Ruby code that
gets laid down, publicly or privately, that’s works well and meets
people’s needs, the better it will get.

Nathaniel

<:((><

···

On Feb 2, 2004, at 13:20, Phil Tomson wrote:

45

I believe with the right framework, a community push could finish it.
By the right framework, I mean something that would make it trivial for
someone to load up a webpage, see a precise and categorised list of
parts needing to be done, and be able to fill in a missing task, or
perhaps add some notes to a wikipage for that task. A wiki is not
suitable for the main organisation, note - it’s too unstructured. And
the varioouus faq-o-matic programs I’ve seen, where people contribute
questions and other people answer them, don’t focus enough on the big
picture. Maybe something like bugzilla could be adapted for the task -
not familiar enough with that.

Another advantage is that it’d let us easily pool togeher code from all
the existing cookbook projects out there, and would provide a natural
framework within which we could extend this beyond the confines of the
perl cookbook.

martin

···

Gavin Sinclair gsinclair@soyabean.com.au wrote:

It’s not a community push that would finish it; it’s devotion from a
few core people and proofreading from a few more.

46

It’s a matter of evidence.

Next time, with your kind permission, we’ll speak about intercal and its
future.

47

A cookbook should be downloadable in one piece for offline viewing.

Gavin

···

On Tuesday, February 3, 2004, 3:24:50 AM, gabriele wrote:

il Mon, 2 Feb 2004 23:34:43 +0900, Gavin Sinclair > gsinclair@soyabean.com.au ha scritto::

I started one such effort with submissions from the Sydney group,
which was never really advertised. It was based on PLEAC (which is
based on the Perl cookbook). I didn’t like the PLEAC “code only”
approach, so thought another effort was justified (besides, all code
is sharable).

My effort has been dead for ages. I’d love to donate it to a good
home. Left alone, one day I would probably make a RubyForge project
out of it, but I’m waaaay too busy on other Ruby stuff to think about
that atm.

what about putting it on rubyforge… but in the code snippets section
?

48

I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then? Cool, I’ll send you the code and
data soon :slight_smile: I think a manual submission process is suitable, with
the maintainer updating the data files. But that’s just in this case.
You can decide that when you recieve it :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Gavin

···

On Tuesday, February 3, 2004, 6:35:03 AM, Martin wrote:

Gavin Sinclair gsinclair@soyabean.com.au wrote:

It’s not a community push that would finish it; it’s devotion from a
few core people and proofreading from a few more.

I believe with the right framework, a community push could finish it.
By the right framework, I mean something that would make it trivial for
someone to load up a webpage, see a precise and categorised list of
parts needing to be done, and be able to fill in a missing task, or
perhaps add some notes to a wikipage for that task. A wiki is not
suitable for the main organisation, note - it’s too unstructured. And
the varioouus faq-o-matic programs I’ve seen, where people contribute
questions and other people answer them, don’t focus enough on the big
picture. Maybe something like bugzilla could be adapted for the task -
not familiar enough with that.

Another advantage is that it’d let us easily pool togeher code from all
the existing cookbook projects out there, and would provide a natural
framework within which we could extend this beyond the confines of the
perl cookbook.

49

Nathaniel Talbott nathaniel@talbott.ws wrote in
message

news:013A62D9-5595-11D8-99FF-000A95CD7A8E@talbott.ws…

The next time they ask you about the bus, you’re
welcome to give them
my email address :slight_smile:

:wink: Are you still in Oregon?

Nope… but I still have in-laws there. I’m
finishing up my current
(Ruby) project, and am looking for new ones, and the
top two places I’m
looking are North Carolina (my current location) and
Oregon. Even if I
telecommute, it’s great to get work that
occasionally brings me close
to family. So if you have any Oregon work, we should
talk :slight_smile:

Seriously, I know so many excellent programmers
that would jump at
the chance to get paid for Ruby coding. I don’t
think buses (or trains
for that matter) are really a problem.

Anyone need some ruby work done in Texas from a bad
programmer? :slight_smile:

I totally agree and I would add that any good
programmer that has
experience in other languages and some OO
background can pick up Ruby
and be productive in a few days.

The only qualifier I would make, from personal
experience, is that a
good programmer coming to Ruby will still be missing
two important
components after a few days - he won’t be hooked up
to the community,
and he won’t be aware of the available libraries.
Oh, and if he hasn’t
used a language with closures, he’ll miss a
significant portion of
Ruby’s power until they click with him. It sounds
like a sales pitch,
but I would say that it is critical for a commercial
project to at
least have a ruby expert on call, if not on the
team. What’s a Ruby
expert? Hard to quantify, but I’d say a minimum of
one
publicly-available Ruby project, and one year of
reading the ruby-talk
list.

I was talking about management
perceptions of the language. We both would agree
that these
perceptions are inaccurate, but they’re still a
barrier.

Perceptions are, indeed, tough. I was just talking
to a friend (one of
those great programmers who would love to be doing
Ruby), and he was
saying that the consulting company he works for has
12 potential
clients that don’t care what technology is used to
implement their
projects. So of course, the salesman is
recommending… .NET??? The
salesman’s justification is that he wants to use the
best thing for his
clients, and his perception is that C# and .NET are
the best. How do we
deal with that? I’m not sure, but I know that the
more Ruby code that
gets laid down, publicly or privately, that’s works
well and meets
people’s needs, the better it will get.

I’m an M$ guy since about '97. Since ~2002 i’ve been
investigating alternatives to M$ - not because their
products suck but because of their practices. I like
ecmascript(javascript) a lot and was seeking a
server-side version(i was using jscript with asp,
which is quite nice, imo). There are a few but they
are either proprietery or dead. I also looked at
php(and used it quite a bit- pragmatic is not ALWAYS
good ;)), Zope, JSP,XANG, SPYCE…a few others. Then I
found ruby and it is better than I knew i needed.

…to my point, I think M$ stuff (in particular .Net)
is best of breed in many cases. If matz had
all the money in the world to throw at ruby it would
be best, i think. But if you go with M$ you pay for
it now and especially tommorrow - not too mention
suffering other monopolistic practices. So go with
.Net if you’ve plenty of bucks now - and plan to(have
$) in the future when you’re forced to upgrade. Or use
ruby, which is immensely competent, open,
approachable, extenisble, cross-platform, free and
cool.

Right now, i’m going with ruby. But frankly that has
bitten me because people see it on my resume and
go…huh? Which speaks to another recent post. Until
ruby gets mainstream, i’ll be eating a lot of
TopRaman.

Paul

···

— Nathaniel Talbott nathaniel@talbott.ws wrote:

On Feb 2, 2004, at 13:20, Phil Tomson wrote:

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/

50

Heh - okay, I’d rather put up than shut up in this case :slight_smile:

martin

···

Gavin Sinclair gsinclair@soyabean.com.au wrote:

I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then? Cool, I’ll send you the code and
data soon :slight_smile: I think a manual submission process is suitable, with
the maintainer updating the data files. But that’s just in this case.
You can decide that when you recieve it :slight_smile: