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Ruby's exceptional creatures

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Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#61

Post by chucke »

newaccount74 wrote: post #58
realusername wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest difference between both is mainly their machine learning story but if you don't intend to go in it (this is a very specific career choice), I'd say both are equally good options. I'd say both are pretty bad at performance critical tasks or UI stuff where usually you would use neither of those.

Python is so much bigger than Ruby. It's not just machine learning. There's also numpy and Jupyter for the scientific community, which are huge. There's arcade for making 2D games. There's Micropython for microcontrollers. There are async database drivers and web frameworks. There's interop for many other programming languages, and it's really easy to make a distributable package with Python runtime included. And tha…

Yes, it is only machine learning. Trying to separate it from the scientific community is creating a wall that does not exist. Besides, barely anyone uses python for 2d games or microcontrollers (out of hobbyist programs, and ruby also has a stack there with mruby or dragonruby, which have professional adoption mostly in japan), and you can't say with a straight face that python is a meaningful player in the Web application space, beyond its niche (and async python is a s**show).

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#62

Post by chucke »

RangerScience wrote: post #9
stevebmark wrote: post #3

It's painful to see method_missing called out as a first class solution in the first creature https://www.exceptionalcreatures.com/bestiary/NoMethodError.... . "Practical Ruby" has three chapters dedicated to method_missing. "define_method" is more common these days and also painful to see. Ruby gets a lot of criticism for embracing magic and indirection ("Ruby, the bad parts of Perl"). It has some good parts (no fun…

Respectfully mostly disagree. Ruby is full of sharp knives. Other languages have dull knives. Writing code without thinking will cut you either way. Things like method missing are exactly the right solution for a certain set of problems. If used thoughtfully, they’re amazing. If used thoughtlessly, bloody mess. But this is true in every language.

Most other languages don't have knifes at all. What do you call the interface{} madness in go?

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#63

Post by djur »

newaccount74 wrote: post #58
realusername wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest difference between both is mainly their machine learning story but if you don't intend to go in it (this is a very specific career choice), I'd say both are equally good options. I'd say both are pretty bad at performance critical tasks or UI stuff where usually you would use neither of those.

Python is so much bigger than Ruby. It's not just machine learning. There's also numpy and Jupyter for the scientific community, which are huge. There's arcade for making 2D games. There's Micropython for microcontrollers. There are async database drivers and web frameworks. There's interop for many other programming languages, and it's really easy to make a distributable package with Python runtime included. And tha…

Learning those specific environments and stacks will take more effort than learning however much Python is necessary for them.

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#64

Post by realusername »

newaccount74 wrote: post #58
realusername wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest difference between both is mainly their machine learning story but if you don't intend to go in it (this is a very specific career choice), I'd say both are equally good options. I'd say both are pretty bad at performance critical tasks or UI stuff where usually you would use neither of those.

Python is so much bigger than Ruby. It's not just machine learning. There's also numpy and Jupyter for the scientific community, which are huge. There's arcade for making 2D games. There's Micropython for microcontrollers. There are async database drivers and web frameworks. There's interop for many other programming languages, and it's really easy to make a distributable package with Python runtime included. And tha…

Yeah sure you can, you can do pretty much anything in any language nowadays anyways, it doesn't mean that its going to be the industry standard. Even Ruby has DragonRuby for games (but not too popular either)

For games, none of the big engines are python or ruby based and Micropython is more of a Python dialect to me with some partial compatibility, you can't just pip install what you want.

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#65

Post by djur »

stevebmark wrote: post #32
RangerScience wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully mostly disagree. Ruby is full of sharp knives. Other languages have dull knives. Writing code without thinking will cut you either way. Things like method missing are exactly the right solution for a certain set of problems. If used thoughtfully, they’re amazing. If used thoughtlessly, bloody mess. But this is true in every language.

Calling method_missing a sharp knife is like calling GOTO a sharp knife

Right, and goto is still used regularly in production code.

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#66

Post by berkes »

RangerScience wrote: post #9
stevebmark wrote: post #3

It's painful to see method_missing called out as a first class solution in the first creature https://www.exceptionalcreatures.com/bestiary/NoMethodError.... . "Practical Ruby" has three chapters dedicated to method_missing. "define_method" is more common these days and also painful to see. Ruby gets a lot of criticism for embracing magic and indirection ("Ruby, the bad parts of Perl"). It has some good parts (no fun…

Respectfully mostly disagree. Ruby is full of sharp knives. Other languages have dull knives. Writing code without thinking will cut you either way. Things like method missing are exactly the right solution for a certain set of problems. If used thoughtfully, they’re amazing. If used thoughtlessly, bloody mess. But this is true in every language.

When you have small children, you put your sharp knives out of the way. If children get a bit older, you first teach em responsible use of a knife, then give a sharp pocket knife. And some kids not even that.

Point being: In Ruby, sharp knives are too accessible, come with no warning or even encouragement.

Yet contrary to actual sharp knives (or guns pointed at feet) the feedback loop is slow. When you shoot yourself in the foot, or cut your finger, you feel it right away and (hopefully) adjust before more accidents happen. With Ruby, a footgun is fired today. Or a sharp knife carelessly tossed in the bag yesterday. But you'll feel the pain in months or years only. And probably not even you, but the person who followed your follow up.

Sharp knives are cool. But they need education on their dangers and responsibilities.

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#67

Post by Lutger »

darkwater wrote: post #56
oh_sigh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't appreciate how it seems like an elaborate ad though: Every error has a link to the paid service they're selling , with the error/exception "Enemies" list as their product

Why so? This is in my book the best form of advertising. It provides anyway something useful for the interested reader, while exposing the (alleged, at least) usefulness of their services. Much better this that a banner or a pop-up in some random website that tracked you down as a Ruby developer.

I don't appreciate it either, maybe I'm a bit dull. I feel tricked as it is unclear from a quick glance what I am looking at is really an advertisement, not a tutorial or some kind of reference. And as an advertisement, it may or may not be useful. At least the incentives are clearly there to present information in a way that benefits their funnel even if it doesn't benefit me as a developer. Even if its not a straight up lie, they will obviously not mention an alternative solution to their product and could very well be quite incomplete.

For a reference, I want something I can trust to give information relevant to my purpose, something that is complete and valid. Not a playful hidden advertisement, funneling me into a single paid solution. Maybe this is why I prefer python, even after working with rails for many years. As I said, I might be a bit dull.

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#68

Post by vidarh »

VonGallifrey wrote: post #59
weatherlight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said, 'If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood or assign them tasks and work. Instead, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.' This resonates with how I feel about programming languages. Python might be more practical, but does it ignite a passion for coding like Ruby has historically done? I remember dabbling in Python, Perl, and JavaScript (E…

This is more or less personal preference though. When you say that Ruby ignites a passion for coding for you then that might not happen for other people. For example I only feel a headache when I look at Ruby code. For context: I worked with C, C#, some Python and now mostly work in Go.

How often do you see people describe that kind of passion for Python? Maybe for lisps, Erlang, Haskell, Smalltalk. It may well put some people off, that's fine, but personally I dread it when I have to work with languages that don't instill that kind of passion.

There are plenty of things I'd like to be different about Ruby and the tooling, but with Ruby I feel like I'm crafting something that at least has the potential for elegance, whereas looking at Python code is like staring at a brutalist building that spews its innards all over its surface.

(and yes, I realise some people love brutalist buildings, and I can too, sometime, when particularly well done, and that's why I chose that example - it's possible to do amazing and elegant things in any language, even - as ugly as I personally find it - Python)

Re: Ruby's exceptional creatures

#70

Post by vidarh »

herbst wrote: post #52
p-e-w wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than Python? 15 years ago I would have agreed. Today, Python is a "gateway" to programming that is also the real thing. It's like one of those old languages designed for beginners to learn coding... and then you can continue to use the same language for your entire professional career as a software engineer, to build just about any production-ready application. Ruby is a beautiful language, but unless you are…

I never 'learned' python and ruby is the path I went with and still use for 90% of my own software. However Python is a easy transition. I rarely struggle to do anything with it when I need it. Even Django wasn't to weird to grasp after years of rails. IMO it's not to relevant which language you choose to learn in the beginning of your career. Whatever is more fun or works better for your interests.

This (that it doesn't matter what you choose to learn early) is a key point.

Early on you should aim to get exposure to multiple languages, ideally at least some very different ones.

So I agree with whatever is more fun. Anything that makes you want to stick with learning is great. Then you can, and should, explore.

If you want something that'll be a marketable skill right away, maybe Python will be a shortcut in the short term, but a developer who knows only one language - whichever one - is eventually going to be at a disadvantage.

The most important skill is not any specific language, but learning how to think about software.

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