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Is Ruby Dying?

jmoses.co

141–150 of 159 posts

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in Manchester. I write new Perl code. Python is Perl with a little nicer syntax and a shitload of baggage from overly opinionated people. Ruby is Perl with a little nicer syntax and no other advantages. I have found no compelling reason to switch, and lots of annoyances that don't seem to exist in Perl.

Following this logic, every language is Perl with a bit of this or that. Perl was one of the first of the kind, but people saw obvious problems with it and so they innovated with 'little nicer syntax' or 'little better object system'. You might not want any of this, but you can't deny most people are happier with Python or Ruby.

There was a talk by Guido Van Rossum effectively saying that Perl, Python and Ruby are the same language.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#142
post #39
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Catalyst? Or Mojolicious? Or Dancer? If it's just used in legacy code, why are there still healthy frameworks being produced (granted, these aren't as popular as Rails, but, Perl on the web is hardly in legacy mode)?

I personally haven't seen any new code being written in Perl during either my time in England or in the Bay Area. I don't really see a reason to use Perl when there are languages like Python and Ruby out there with easier learning curves and which are just as, if not more powerful (would be happy to learn some good reasons, though).

Just ask http://www.builtinperl.com/ for the reasons why. For exemple don't you know that DuckDuckGo is using a lot of Perl ?

Another one, that is huge : YouPorn (itself) is using Catalyst. YOU-PORN!

In my opinion, the main Perl's strength is the cpan.org :

  Stop reinventing wheels, start building space rockets
  
  The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) 
  currently has 128,529 Perl modules in 28,883
  distributions, written by 11,129 authors, 
  mirrored on 266 servers.
  
  The archive has been online since October 
  1995 and is constantly growing.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#143
post #142
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally haven't seen any new code being written in Perl during either my time in England or in the Bay Area. I don't really see a reason to use Perl when there are languages like Python and Ruby out there with easier learning curves and which are just as, if not more powerful (would be happy to learn some good reasons, though).

Just ask http://www.builtinperl.com/ for the reasons why. For exemple don't you know that DuckDuckGo is using a lot of Perl ? Another one, that is huge : YouPorn (itself) is using Catalyst. YOU-PORN ! In my opinion, the main Perl's strength is the cpan.org : Stop reinventing wheels, start building space rockets The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) currently has 128,529 Perl modules in 28,883 distributions, w…

Actually youporn, rewrote all their code in PHP:

http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/4/2/youporn-targeting-2...

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#144
Ruby is like Disco. It was fun for a while, but now it is old news.

I was forced to learn Ruby while at Aardvark, as well as the Rails and the Agile process.

It was true today as it was then; Ruby, Rails, and Agile are absolutely useless for real data science and machine learning, and this is what companies need to move forward. Indeed, to bring machine learning tech to the Aardvark team, I had to fight tooth and nail against the Rails consultants and the Agile process guys.

Ruby is a useful gateway language for learning other modern scripting languages such as python, lua, and scala

I agree that Ruby is now legacy technology. Let me be clear; I use it all the time. It is useful to build stable projects based on solid ideas, and I use it for dev ops, for crawling the web, and for making simple DSLs. Chef is very good (compared to, say, Ansible) , and the Bundler deployment system is quite nice. It is easy to build web endpoints in Sinatra, and the Nokogiri gem is a pleasure to work with compared to, say, java JSoup.

But Ruby is not moving the needle forward. It does not even have a decent NumPy-like module, which makes it completely useless for modern back end work in data science, machine learning, and the real things companies need to generate revenue

Rails is a good example of being overspecialized. They are so good at web programing circa 2007 that the future passed them by.

Python. Lua. Scala. Closure. These are the future.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in Manchester. I write new Perl code. Python is Perl with a little nicer syntax and a shitload of baggage from overly opinionated people. Ruby is Perl with a little nicer syntax and no other advantages. I have found no compelling reason to switch, and lots of annoyances that don't seem to exist in Perl.

Following this logic, every language is Perl with a bit of this or that. Perl was one of the first of the kind, but people saw obvious problems with it and so they innovated with 'little nicer syntax' or 'little better object system'. You might not want any of this, but you can't deny most people are happier with Python or Ruby.

You're not wrong, but I wrote that from my perspective, as someone who primarily writes Perl and needs a compelling reason to switch. Obviously someone who was writing code pre-Perl will probably see things a different way.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in Manchester. I write new Perl code. Python is Perl with a little nicer syntax and a shitload of baggage from overly opinionated people. Ruby is Perl with a little nicer syntax and no other advantages. I have found no compelling reason to switch, and lots of annoyances that don't seem to exist in Perl.

I'm actually a big fan of Perl, but your characterization of Ruby is wrong. Ruby is Perl with object-orientation first, nicer syntax is a minor detail after that.

It's the only major detail to me, because I can do the majority of what I would use in Ruby, in Perl. Nicer syntax is something I can't do though.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in Manchester. I write new Perl code. Python is Perl with a little nicer syntax and a shitload of baggage from overly opinionated people. Ruby is Perl with a little nicer syntax and no other advantages. I have found no compelling reason to switch, and lots of annoyances that don't seem to exist in Perl.

Can you elaborate on Python's baggage? I'm simply curious.

I wouldn't characterise myself as any sort of expert so really I'm just talking about minor things like ternary operators, ugliness with super, scoping, the annoyance of PEP8 being overly specific etc. Just decisions taken for the sake of 'correctness' that end up being annoying.

Python isn't so bad, decorators and importing is all very swanky. I find that in general though things tend to be less elegant than intended but the delusion of perfection is maintained. I oppose Python's core philosophy and having used a bunch of Django, that also soured me a bit.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually a big fan of Perl, but your characterization of Ruby is wrong. Ruby is Perl with object-orientation first, nicer syntax is a minor detail after that.

It's the only major detail to me, because I can do the majority of what I would use in Ruby, in Perl. Nicer syntax is something I can't do though.

See the CPAN module Moops.

Re: Is Ruby Dying?

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the only major detail to me, because I can do the majority of what I would use in Ruby, in Perl. Nicer syntax is something I can't do though.

See the CPAN module Moops.

I'm thinking more of things like the p6 arrow. Moops is part of the first part, things I can already do in Perl that are in Ruby.
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