Even though I’m a Ruby fan, this blog is currently running on the Wordpress blogging engine. It’s the platform where we have the best plugin for defensio.com. As you probably know, it’s written in PHP ;-)

Was great to meet you at CUSEC, you’re definitely inspired me to start my own blog and actually write on it. I’m using ExpressionEngine (I’m just a PHP guy at heart), and as you can see by codingbusiness.com I haven’t figured out how to save drafts yet!

Are you coming to Skrud’s birthday party?

No matter that the same work can be done a helluva lot faster in ruby or python or [insert language here] “we use Java”. I’m literally starting to resent Java because it’s so long and drawn out to do most things. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great for some stuff (like out performing rails in a web format - don’t shoot me) but I just want to be one of these people that loves their job and loves the language they are using - I want to create beautiful, readable code - I want to be a ruby / rails freelancer :¬(

It just gets under your skin - so as the article says, don’t learn it, ignorance is indeed bliss.

http://ubermonkey.net/blog/2008/02/25

I don’t wanna get into my language is better than your language kind of discussion, but I’m interested in knowing the reasons behind such grand statement. Maybe you’ve had some bad experiance for which elaboration will help us all out there!

Smalltalk has a tiny syntax and is wonderful for object oriented development. Ruby is Java crawling slowly toward Smalltalk by adding syntax (But it does have a module system that makes it possible to deliver an app without dragging along every library in the development environment)

Somebody mentioned the bitter people with a prehistory of Lisp who can tell you that this was solved in a library they used in 73 - but everyone else gets a “deer in the headlights” look when the syntax deviates from their paradigm. Forth, APL/K/J, Prolog, Haskell are probably way superior for a lot of stuff, but people aren’t willing to learn.

LOL — you really don’t have a clue what refactoring is about, do you?

Ruby may be awesome, but don’t lump all static languages in with C++/Java/C#.

OCaml and Haskell lack much of the noted wordiness in your Dict example (but you still have to compile …)

When I first saw the screencast, I actually posted an article about it: Culture shock

NetBeans does a great job if you want an IDE with auto-completion. As the IronRuby project matures, you’ll probably see Intellisense support in Visual Studio too.

Also, since Ruby code has much less boilerplate code than C# or Java, you rarely need the kind of multi-hundred-line refactoring operations sometimes needed in these languages.

however there are still a few legit uses for other languages:

- A faster language to combine with Ruby. I am still undecided whether I will use C or C#. Right now I tend to C because of all the legacy code in C.
- Some concepts in other languages are very useful, for Example the Io language has good introspection. Ruby needs this!
Also, the feature i miss most is keyword arguments. I often write very long methods (many arguments) but I also dont want to be forced to use a hash just to address keys at a later position.

By the way to the guys praising Groovy - Groovy sucks. It is the java attempt to keep people in java.

Even python is a lot better than groovy, and if you need the speed anyway you can go lua. I really dont see ANY reason for groovy except to keep java programmers with the sinking boat that is called java (”sinking” not so far because of the money, there is still a lot of money, but because of what language is GOOD and which language is NOT good.)

On one hand, I find Ruby still seems to have the edge on expressiveness and the ease of doing metaprogramming. On the other hand, I’ve heard the Python VM is more mature and stable. But that is changing right now with all the work being done on the different Ruby VM implementations (YARV, Rubinius, JRuby, IRonRuby).

If you’re not using either however, I agree with Carl and Stijn that both are really worth a look. And give them both a try.

I totally agree with Chris when he points out that Ruby is not strictly a web language. It’s a general-purpose language like C++, C# and Java. The wildly popular Rails web framework has changed that perception since it came out, however.

well, i would rather have jewels on a plane instead of snakes

But I would hate to do any refactoring in a big dynamic project — and automatic refactoring will certainly not be possible.
While unit-tests help, compilation checks are just so faster and more thorough.

And optional arguments are available in VB/VB.NET for a very long time, but no one wanted them to C# until everyone saw it in Ruby.

Now what I agree with are the things I always wanted to see in C#: mixins (traits?) and multiple returns.
Hopefully they will add them at some point.

Btw, talking of consoles, Immediate Window is your friend (it even has Intellisense).

Dictionary someDic = new Dictionary();

Granted, Ruby is much more concise and java is much more verbose, but although

Dictionary someDic = new Dictionary();
is kind of ugle compared to

some_dic = {}

Java’s syntax (although can benefit from some simplification) still expresses much more about the intent of the programer. You immediately know what kind of objects are being stored in this Dictionary and can make some safe decisions as to how to manipulate it. You can also choose to use its agnostic manifestation :

Dictionary x = new Dictionary() which will behave more or less the same as its Ruby counterpart, etc….

On the other hand, you can never tell anything about what kind stuff this dictionary would hold at runtime in the Ruby world, and don’t get me started on “Duck Typing” because while its nifty for little scripts, it does not scale when 10+ people are working with the same code base!

Also, optional parameters are possible in Java either through a similar contraption to Ruby’s hashtables (minus the symbol support), or through varargs!

Don’t get me wrong, Ruby is great. I use it every day, and I also use Java daily. Each language has its place, purpose, pros, and cons.

You also have to keep Groovy in mind, because if Java programmers are going to seek beauty and brevity in a dynamic language its gonna be Groovy not Ruby because of ease of entry into it and its support for both typed and untyped syntax!

Ruby isn’t “focused on web stuff” by any means - I think you’re confusing Ruby the language with Rails the wildly popular framework built in Ruby. In fact most pre-Rails Ruby developers would probably get a chuckle from thinking that Ruby is a “web language” ala PHP. Since learning Ruby I’ve amassed a moderate collection of command-line Ruby scripts I use on a day-to-day basis that have absolutely nothing to do with the web.

I’ve now used Ruby far more than I’ve used Python simply because I enjoy Ruby’s syntax more, Rails is built in it and I genuinely like the community around it (which is not to imply that Python’s community isn’t just as likable, I just don’t know). In my mind there’s no concrete “advantage” to learning Ruby over Python, any “advantage” will largely be subjective and personal. Rather think of it as “its great to learn a dynamic language that exposes you to concepts not commonly found in statically-typed or pure-OOP languages”, pick one, dive in and learn it. Lots of intelligent, productive people are writing wildly cool code in Python as well, I’m sure.

Don’t get caught up in the language, get caught up in the learning.

Cheers
Chris