Anyone have any thoughts on why python and ruby are so similar, yet so far apart? They are obviously very close, because people switch between them all the time. And they are compared on everything (languages features, libraries, tooling...). I think it's a healthy competitive environment.
The biggest difference is the communities surrounding each, and the impression each leaves on people. When I think of "Python", I think of a mature, helpful, experienced, talented, well-educated community. I can generally trust their advice, I can trust their code, and I can trust their technical decisions. It feels like collaboration is important and encouraged. The Ruby community, whether this is deserved or not, l…
Ruby 2.0.0 Released
161–170 of 303 posts
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a rubyist. I have nothing against python at all, but I have zero interest in learning it. Why? Simply because if I'm going to devote mental capacity to a new language I want it to be more different. Haskell is my current choice because as far as I can tell it is the opposite of Ruby in every way except the one that is my primary criteria for interest in a language: concision.
I think the true measure of a language is how little it makes you swear when trying to make changes to your own code that you wrote a year ago.
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was thinking about this lately a lot as I started doing some Python after almost 10 years of Ruby, I think it boils down to the simplicty vs. elegance tradeoff. If you want to have elegant, very high-level APIs that hide a lot of details, like Rails with has_many :posts in class definitions etc. you have to sacrifice simplicity and transparency - this is what defines Ruby in comparison to Python, in hundreds of pla…
The unfortunate thing is that there really isn't a tradeoff if you build your elegant and simple DSL on top of a set of API primitives that give you access to low-level behavior. Look at Hibernate. As of the last time I used it (admittedly, several years ago), it was almost impossible to run raw queries against the underlaying database and get back simple result sets as arrays of tuples. You had either the abstractio…
ActiveRelation is very similar to the criteria api, but it still uses string parsign.
HQL is awesome.
That said, I haven't done Java for 3 years and am a 100% rubyist (and some lua)
The developments of rails are good. But they are simply all the stuff that maturing platforms will need. Rails is becoming JEE, but in a more developer friendly way. This is a good thing.
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they are very different too... I just can't explain how or where. Some people SWEAR by one of the two, and refuse to use the other. That's pretty harsh for languages that similar. There must be a reason... (The simplicity vs elegance argument makes sense) Edit: I think I mean the communities are far apart.
I'm a rubyist. I have nothing against python at all, but I have zero interest in learning it. Why? Simply because if I'm going to devote mental capacity to a new language I want it to be more different. Haskell is my current choice because as far as I can tell it is the opposite of Ruby in every way except the one that is my primary criteria for interest in a language: concision.
I used to like those hello world concision contests, but in fact who cares? Who writes a single hello world code? What we need is a language solving the real problems met in most codebase, and I'd say the biggest fish here is the dependencies mess.
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#165Today, I'll lose at least 50 karma points, but it's worth: Why people still use Ruby? 1. Because they get dream day rates for maintaining rusty slow legacy systems 2. Because they do not want to learn new languages and can stay in their comfort zone 3. Because they think it's still 2005 and nobody cares about slow server response times And now Ruby lovers, click on downvote or give your reasons why you still use Ruby…
People program in what they know and what gets the job done in the most optimal way for them. Learning a new language without a good reason past certain users not liking it is silly. Plenty of people criticize Notch for using Java in all of his games, but Notch gets things done. It's hard to ridicule someone making so many useful things (well you can, but most end up looking like jerks lacking tact). Might not be in…
I've been implementing a compiler in Java (not my original decision, but I don't think it was a bad one) and, although its frustrating at times knowing that some list transformation would be a one-liner in other languages but five lines of Java, it hasn't actually proven to be a drag on productivity. You have automatic memory management, a reasonable selection of basic collections, a reasonable selection of abstraction mechanisms, the ability to implement things like immutable classes, etc, so there aren't any major obstacles to productivity.
A lot of times when writing new code I wish I had builtin tagged unions, since I have to do it manually with a class and an enum. But once I've actually implemented a tagged union, I don't find that future additions and maintenance work on the code actually take any extra time.
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#166I do wonder about the long term success of Ruby. Rails is easily the most visible project for Ruby. Rails is big, and all that code represents a high barrier to entry for any framework in a different language that wants to compete. However, a lot of people I talk to are moving to pure JS front-end + REST backend. In this world Rails doesn't deliver any particular value (in my opinion). Ruby also has utility for doing…
> I just think it will slowly become less relevant. That's true for virtually anything. Do you think C/C++ or Java or JS will be mainstream 30 years from now. They will be in the same situation FORTRAN is today: important because of lots of legacy code, but not a viable choice when starting a new project. Of course some of them will never die. LISP comes to my mind. :-)
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#167Anyone have any thoughts on why python and ruby are so similar, yet so far apart? They are obviously very close, because people switch between them all the time. And they are compared on everything (languages features, libraries, tooling...). I think it's a healthy competitive environment.
The biggest difference is the communities surrounding each, and the impression each leaves on people. When I think of "Python", I think of a mature, helpful, experienced, talented, well-educated community. I can generally trust their advice, I can trust their code, and I can trust their technical decisions. It feels like collaboration is important and encouraged. The Ruby community, whether this is deserved or not, l…
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#168Overall, a good feature set. I only see some utility for keyword arguments, admittedly, but I tend to write very functional code, so maybe other people will get more mileage. Refinements, as I understand them, are a bad idea. I understand the motivation, but this is not the way to go about it. There's now a new scope all over the place (the set of refinements applied to any given class). This means that the behavior…
The current behaviour makes the scope global, and one would simply overwrite the methods of the other, surely that is a worse thing, no?
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's nothing but flame bait Why? I am damn serious about every point: Ruby/its entire ecosystem/Rails/DHH is outdated/becoming obsolete/so 2005.
Repeating "x is so 2005" is not a discussion point. Your original post, and every one since (including the multiple sets of edits you apply to each), consist of nothing but a daisy chain of mud slinging and ad-hominem attacks directed at other commenters. You're a troll, plain and simple. Sorry for feeding you, but I simply think it's sad this unproductive rant has completely derailed the entire discussion here.
I agree, just because something has been around a long time e.g. Unix/Linux doesn't mean it's bad.
If I had a buck for every time I heard a Rubyist say "Java is so 90's" ...
Re: Ruby 2.0.0 Released
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a rubyist. I have nothing against python at all, but I have zero interest in learning it. Why? Simply because if I'm going to devote mental capacity to a new language I want it to be more different. Haskell is my current choice because as far as I can tell it is the opposite of Ruby in every way except the one that is my primary criteria for interest in a language: concision.
The more I think about it the more I believe concision is overrated and borderline dangerous. Shaving a few keystroke today very often means great troubles later. I used to like those hello world concision contests, but in fact who cares? Who writes a single hello world code? What we need is a language solving the real problems met in most codebase, and I'd say the biggest fish here is the dependencies mess.