[OT] Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday

[Dan Shafer]

So I spent a good bit of time today with Ruby. I can see how people  
who are working in Java might find Ruby to be "simple, elegant, fun"  
programming. But for those of us coming out of Rev, I have to say I  
thought the Ruby syntax was...well...sorry...ugly.

There were @ and @@ and : and < and # signs strewn all about the Ruby  
landscape. And (yipes) curly braces to boot.

I can't for the life of me see how Ruby is better than Python as a  
language, really. Ruby is line-oriented so white space isn't  
significant like it is in Python but I found that getting used to  
white-space significance took about an hour. So there's no big win  
there. There are lots of interesting-looking high-level components  
for Ruby (they're called Gems...cute) but like Python it uses Tk for  
graphics stuff (ugh). Python has a HUGE number of class libraries.

Rails -- a Web app framework for Ruby -- looks very cool but there  
are lots of great Web app frameworks for Python, too.

I don't know. One thing I am sure of. I won't be spending any time  
with Ruby. I'd rather sharpen Python skills if it comes to doing  
server-side stuff Rev isn't up to. So far, I haven't found anything I  
want to do that Rev can't.

So Rev remains my safe haven.





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Revolution Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
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