Ruby Is The Future

Post by ansin » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 9:34 PM UTC

tannerburson wrote: post #19

ansin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what has your experience been like? Do you have any major gripes with the language or are you still on a Ruby honeymoon?

I'm not the parent but I'll reply anyway. I have very few issues with Ruby as a language, in general it let's me get from thought to working code quicker than any other language I've used. Honestly the largest issues I've run into with Ruby typically deal with people trying to be too clever. Ruby certainly provides a lot of ways for people who want to look incredibly clever to hang themselves and anyone using their c…

Post by ansin » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 9:50 PM UTC

nir wrote: post #22

ansin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

->"I assume if there were more people coding Ruby, there would be a better chance someone would step up and take his place." Is it more the fact that the community is small or that fewer people share their code than in the Python community? Just wondering.

I don't really know Python's community that well, but I would wager it's probably due to sheer size. I disagree with PG's "law of averages" regarding choosing environments - working in a language that has more users does have significant benefits in my opinion. BTW another example that comes to mind regarding beginner-friendliness is how long it took to get Rails working with Apache. Before Phusion you were supposed…

Post by ansin » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 9:58 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #8

ankhmoop wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As noted in Werner Schuster's article, many languages (such as C# or Scala) do support type-safe, non-ambiguous, non-conflicting extension of existing classes, demonstrating that extension of existing classes can be safely implemented and does not require the use of dangerous monkey-patching.

dealing with the type system in scala can be a pain and is a hit to productivity in the early stages. The question is if the hit in the early stages leads to more productivity in the later stages. I'm not convinced that it does. I've done a lot of ruby, and I've had monkey patching bite me a few times. However, fixing the problem was never that hard (two days max) and is clearly overshadowed by the productivity gaine…

Post by blasdel » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 10:11 PM UTC

nir wrote: post #22

ansin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

->"I assume if there were more people coding Ruby, there would be a better chance someone would step up and take his place." Is it more the fact that the community is small or that fewer people share their code than in the Python community? Just wondering.

I don't really know Python's community that well, but I would wager it's probably due to sheer size. I disagree with PG's "law of averages" regarding choosing environments - working in a language that has more users does have significant benefits in my opinion. BTW another example that comes to mind regarding beginner-friendliness is how long it took to get Rails working with Apache. Before Phusion you were supposed…

Post by ansin » Wed, Apr 01, 2009, 10:29 PM UTC

SamReidHughes_ wrote: post #15

ansin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with excess verbosity in C#? I know this is a separate argument from the monkey patching issue but for me the conciseness and elegance of the Ruby syntax versus C# is the primary reason to choose Ruby.

Which version of C# are you thinking of? In C# 3, the verbosity level is much less than in C# 2, where it's slightly less than C# 1. I don't see where Ruby syntax is particularly more concise than C# 3's. Well, let me clarify "particularly". I don't find myself feeling like I'm suffering under C#'s syntax, relative to Haskell's. It has about the same amount of syntactic overhead: writing types for method parameters,…