Ruby Goody :)

ruby-talk
1

Hi,

I often saw discussions about "what is better" -- and not only
concerning Ruby. Most of this discussion were made (?correct word? or
is it "discussions were lead"? or..? Head.dictionary.use == empty :wink:
by pointing to "the other" saying "the bad thing with XYZ is...".

I would be very interested in what other Rubyists do like most with
Ruby -- without any comparison with other languages.

What is "your most wanted feature of Ruby already implemented" ?

For the first I will start here with three things:

1) The Ruby mailing list is a friendly place on earth.
聽聽(Support matters!)

聽聽and

2) You does not need to know everything about Ruby to handle it.
聽聽This should be understood in two ways:

聽聽First interpretation:
聽聽Ruby is able to be complex enough and to handle complex algorithms
聽聽and to remain interesting. And it is simple enough to be
聽聽recognized as an interesting "object" to learn from the start on.

聽聽Second interpretation:
聽聽If you know a certain way "to speak to your Ruby" you can
聽聽interpolate your knowledge to and into other programming
聽聽situations and Ruby phrases and most of the time it works out of
聽聽the box or with only a little change.

聽聽聽聽and

3) Most of the time one knows what to ask / to search for if someting
聽聽聽聽needs to be clearified.
聽聽You dont need to learn a certain "ruby talk" to get
聽聽聽聽understood. For example: A string is a string is a string. Ruby
聽聽聽聽is not that special in its "talk about" that you dont need to
聽聽聽聽learn a special language to talk about the language you want to
聽聽聽聽talk about. That makes searching for informations -- for example
聽聽聽聽-- in the documentation much more easier and (important not only
聽聽聽聽for beginners!) successful -- and this in turn keeps one motivated.

聽聽Enough said :wink:

聽聽What do you think ?

PS: This is not intended to be the start of a flame war -- that's why
I dont said anything like "Ruby is better than XYZ, becaus of alpha
beta gamma..."

Kind regards,
Meino

2

Meino Christian Cramer wrote:

Hi,

I often saw discussions about "what is better" -- and not only
concerning Ruby. Most of this discussion were made (?correct word? or
is it "discussions were lead"? or..? Head.dictionary.use == empty :wink: by pointing to "the other" saying "the bad thing with XYZ is...".

I would be very interested in what other Rubyists do like most with
Ruby -- without any comparison with other languages.

What is "your most wanted feature of Ruby already implemented" ?

For the first I will start here with three things:

1) The Ruby mailing list is a friendly place on earth.
  (Support matters!)

  and

2) You does not need to know everything about Ruby to handle it.
  This should be understood in two ways:

  First interpretation:
  Ruby is able to be complex enough and to handle complex algorithms
  and to remain interesting. And it is simple enough to be
  recognized as an interesting "object" to learn from the start on.

  Second interpretation:
  If you know a certain way "to speak to your Ruby" you can
  interpolate your knowledge to and into other programming
  situations and Ruby phrases and most of the time it works out of
  the box or with only a little change.

    and

3) Most of the time one knows what to ask / to search for if someting
    needs to be clearified.
  You dont need to learn a certain "ruby talk" to get
    understood. For example: A string is a string is a string. Ruby
    is not that special in its "talk about" that you dont need to
    learn a special language to talk about the language you want to
    talk about. That makes searching for informations -- for example
    -- in the documentation much more easier and (important not only
    for beginners!) successful -- and this in turn keeps one motivated.

  Enough said :wink:

  What do you think ?

PS: This is not intended to be the start of a flame war -- that's why
I dont said anything like "Ruby is better than XYZ, becaus of alpha
beta gamma..."

Kind regards,
Meino

* Ruby's blocks/closures/iterators combination is what I like most. I love "yield" in its simplicity of syntax.

Runners ups include:

Ruby's active, friendly community.

Ruby's pure OO + design to stay out of the way. Allowing simple one-liner or few-liner procedural programs. And allowing expressions like "hello".length or 5.times.

Ruby's exception handling. Even better than java's exception handling.

Ruby's support for regex.

Ruby continously adding practical libraries to the language. For example, ext/dl (aka "ruby/dl" aka "ruby-dl") was added in ruby 1.8 and allows easy use of DLL or .so dynamic/shared libraries.

RAA + RubyForge + RubyGems growing/improving rapidly so those of us that miss perl's CPAN have a good foundation to start with.

I'm convinced an experienced programmer that reads a ruby book over a weekend will be more productive with ruby than with his current language (in more cases than not).

3

"Meino Christian Cramer" <Meino.Cramer@gmx.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:20040714.200329.92587028.Meino.Cramer@gmx.de...

Hi,

I often saw discussions about "what is better" -- and not only
concerning Ruby. Most of this discussion were made (?correct word? or
is it "discussions were lead"? or..? Head.dictionary.use == empty :wink:
by pointing to "the other" saying "the bad thing with XYZ is...".

I would be very interested in what other Rubyists do like most with
Ruby -- without any comparison with other languages.

What is "your most wanted feature of Ruby already implemented" ?

- blocks and closures
- threads
- regular expressions
- clean OO

Regards

    robert

4

ruby is simple.
Ok, we have lots of strange things like 1..n vs 1...n, 6 ways to
insert a string in the code,and various ways to store a variable, but
basically once you got objects, modules,Procs and exceptions you find
(alamost) everything really simple and consistent.

路路路

il Thu, 15 Jul 2004 03:03:24 +0900, Meino Christian Cramer <Meino.Cramer@gmx.de> ha scritto::

5

snip ---- 8< ----

Ruby's exception handling. Even better than java's exception handling.

Hey, wasn't the assignment to not compare Ruby to other languages? :wink:
(just kidding).

snip ---- 8< ----

Otherwise, I agree with all that was mentioned before. Let me just add
my two cents:
- The pickaxe. It is always a nice thing to pick up a relatively
small book on a programming language and find out that it's
practically all you need for many of your reference needs.
- I find that with Ruby I am rarely forced into using certain
constructs or to transform what I want to do (a.k.a. the code in my
head) to actual code, and when I do then it has always been my problem
(i.e. I didn't know how to do certain things in Ruby, or I wasn't
aware of a certain library). My point is that Ruby acts the way I
think. Or should I say that it's easy for me to think the way Ruby
acts?

6

gabriele renzi wrote:

路路路

il Thu, 15 Jul 2004 03:03:24 +0900, Meino Christian Cramer > <Meino.Cramer@gmx.de> ha scritto::

ruby is simple. Ok, we have lots of strange things like 1..n vs 1...n, 6 ways to
insert a string in the code,and various ways to store a variable, but
basically once you got objects, modules,Procs and exceptions you find
(alamost) everything really simple and consistent.

1. Consistent variable assignment semantics.
  and
2. The only false values are false and nil.

Together, these make the ||= idiom useful.