Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

sgt.hootr.club

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 184 posts

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#71

Post by troad »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #16
sushibowl wrote: post #10

I'm sort of the inverse of this author: I have always liked Python and disliked Ruby. It's true though that python has changed a lot , and it's a mixed bag IMHO. I think every language feature python has added can have a reasonable argument made for its existence, however collectively it kind of makes the language burgeon under the weight of its own complexity. "one way to do it" really hasn't been a hard goal for th…

I feel similar about "weight" in Python. Some people can really overdo it with the type annotations, wanting to annotate every little variable inside any procedure, even if as a human it is quite easy to infer its type and for the type checker the type is already clear. It adds so much clutter and at the end of the day I think: "Why aren't you just writing Java instead?" and that's probably where that notion originat…

I've come to the view that the best flow is to build a system in a dynamic language, and then - once you've got the broad strokes figured out - begin gradually typing it, where appropriate.

You definitely need to have a decent grasp of architecture to make this work - strict FP is very helpful to prevent any early spaghettification - but you ultimately get the best of both worlds this way: rapid iteration for the early stages and type safety once you develop a feel for the system you're building.

I've been doing this in Elixir in the last few months and I've really been enjoying it.

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#72

Post by latexr »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #12

It's the never ending "end"s that bother me about Ruby. class Mess def chaos(x) if x > 0 [1,2,3].each do |i| case i when 1 if i.odd? puts "odd" else puts "even" end when 2 begin puts "trying" rescue puts "failed" end else puts "other" end end else puts "negative" end end end Clear away all those ends and the program logic pops out. Much fresher! class Mess: def chaos(self, x): if x > 0: for i in [1, 2, 3]: match i: c…

That Python code looks like it was punched in the belly and is about to fall down on itself like a Jenga tower. Additionally, the last `else` is hard to track visually and if you make the slightest error in whitespace (which are invisible characters!), everything breaks.

To each their own. It’s because we all have different preferences that there are so many choices.

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#73

Post by troad »

Ruby is such an elegant language, but the strong and ongoing hostility to any sort of sensible gradual typing is a real mistake.

I know that the Ruby community loves its clever runtime metaprogramming, but even the most metaprogrammed codebase is still going to consist mostly of plain old in-out methods. And as anyone who's ever typed a dynamic codebase knows, you pick up so much low-hanging fruit, in terms of edge cases and errors, when you slap some types on those. You don't need to type everything, but there is real hostility in Ruby circles to gradual typing, even where it would make sense and wouldn't impose any major costs.

Personally, I've stopped writing Ruby. Short of any pathway to sensible gradual typing, I just can't shake the feeling that every new line of Ruby is instant tech debt. Which is such a shame, since I find real beauty in the language.

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#74

Post by matltc »

pmkary wrote: post #11

Back when autocompletion and stuff were only available in Visual Studio/Xcode/Other bug IDEs, I was forced to use Ruby and fell in love with it. It didn't matter what I used as my editor was Sublime. But when VSCode came and language features became democratized, I never touched a type-less language again. Why should someone opt for a language with absolutely no features where one can have autocompletion, typecheckin…

As someone coming from Ruby to TypeScript, I find types cumbersome, verbose, complex, and not of much use. I have been writing and reading TS for the past six months. What am I missing?

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#75

Post by maccard »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #48
javaunsafe2019 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree. Had to work in the past with ruby. Loved it but type errors during runtime where a thing and therefore I would never use ruby in production again. I use kotlin nowadays…

I used Kotlin before it was popular and people laughed at me... And now I use TypeScript...

Kotlin is lovely to work with but holy hell is it slow to iterate on.

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#76

Post by nurettin »

wild_egg wrote: post #69
nurettin wrote: post #38

Ruby has a unified interface for select/map/reduce over all containers. They do lazy calculations if specified. You can chain expressions simply by appending them at the end without scrolling to the back of the expression. That is objectively better than lisp and python. Sure, you can always rewrite to match that style with macros in lisp and generators in python, but they weren't meant to be used that way. Sad thing…

Lisp was absolutely meant to be used that way.

What I meant was how (op modifier *params) "homomorphism" is praised by literally everyone and their dog and it is simply worse than params.op1(modifier).op2(modifier)

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#78

Post by zelphirkalt »

troad wrote: post #71
zelphirkalt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similar about "weight" in Python. Some people can really overdo it with the type annotations, wanting to annotate every little variable inside any procedure, even if as a human it is quite easy to infer its type and for the type checker the type is already clear. It adds so much clutter and at the end of the day I think: "Why aren't you just writing Java instead?" and that's probably where that notion originat…

I've come to the view that the best flow is to build a system in a dynamic language, and then - once you've got the broad strokes figured out - begin gradually typing it, where appropriate. You definitely need to have a decent grasp of architecture to make this work - strict FP is very helpful to prevent any early spaghettification - but you ultimately get the best of both worlds this way: rapid iteration for the ear…

Yep, I agree with this. This is what I usually try in Python. Granted, Python is a way worse vehicle for FP than Elixir is, but I try to keep my procedures as pure functions as far as possible with not too big sacrifices in readability and performance. Most of the time a functional solution can be found, even in Python.

And maybe I am a little bit delusional thinking this, but in my experience, when you think deeply and come up with strict FP solutions, and you know what you are doing, then a lot of type issues don't arise, or are obvious to avoid. The simple fact that one thing you initialize once doesn't change over the course of its lifetime, already avoids tons of mistakes. You simply don't get this "Oh, is at that point in time that member of object x already modified, to be value y?" shit.

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#79

Post by zelphirkalt »

kirurik wrote: post #37
zelphirkalt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similar about "weight" in Python. Some people can really overdo it with the type annotations, wanting to annotate every little variable inside any procedure, even if as a human it is quite easy to infer its type and for the type checker the type is already clear. It adds so much clutter and at the end of the day I think: "Why aren't you just writing Java instead?" and that's probably where that notion originat…

I am not an experienced programmer, but I liked python because of the dynamic typing, but tbh no type hints are a nightmare (as I used to use python). These days I gravitate towards using type hints unless I am using an ipynb because it looks clean, but it can be a little much, it can look quite ugly. Not every usecase needs type hints is what I've learned.

A good compromise can be for example: Have your type annotations in the head of the procedure you are writing. That includes types of arguments and return type. You write it once at the head, and when you need to know you can look it up there, but you don't need to clutter the whole rest of the code. If you write well composing functions, then this will be all you ever need. If you write procedures 300 LoC, then well ... you shot yourself in the foot.

Re: Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)

#80

Post by nchmy »

matltc wrote: post #74
pmkary wrote: post #11

Back when autocompletion and stuff were only available in Visual Studio/Xcode/Other bug IDEs, I was forced to use Ruby and fell in love with it. It didn't matter what I used as my editor was Sublime. But when VSCode came and language features became democratized, I never touched a type-less language again. Why should someone opt for a language with absolutely no features where one can have autocompletion, typecheckin…

As someone coming from Ruby to TypeScript, I find types cumbersome, verbose, complex, and not of much use. I have been writing and reading TS for the past six months. What am I missing?

I've only used TS a bit, but I find the typing (and everything else) to be vastly more difficult/convoluted than in Go. Though, using Deno does help a lot (not necessarily with typing though).
Post reply on HN