richard lyons wrote:
> I keep seeing mention of Ruby, but have no idea what its strengths
> are.
I was biting my fingers to keep from posting a pro-ruby message. But
now I can't resist.
Perl is a very "evolved" language. It grew like a mold. It was not
designed into the language that it is today. Don't get me wrong. I
have used Perl very much and it has been very useful to me. But I am
tired of the warts.
People like Ruby for similar reasons to why people like Python. These
are languages which were _designed_ to be a language. People compare
them because they are both similar and different from Perl in many of
the same ways. Really Ruby and Python are in many ways more alike
than they are dissimilar. But as with any two things that fill
similar purposes there will be competition between them even if the
authors did not start out with competition in mind.
Ruby is an extremely well thought out language. The author did an
excellent job of crafting an elegant and powerful language. But Ruby
was created in Japan and until a few years ago the documentation was
all in Japanese. That limited its adoption in western countries and
is why it has only recently become well known outside of Japan. But
now that the western programmers have rallied around ruby most of the
documentation is available in english[1]. And Ruby has been very well
tested by years of production use. You will find it a solid
performer. I highly recommend Ruby. For a summary of the language
itself I can't do anywhere near as good of a job at describing it as
the Pragmatic Programmer's do so please read the preface of the
provided reference for that.
But it all boils down to this. Python uses indention for control
flow. Python advocates claim this is a feature. Others claim this is
a terrible misfeature. Regardless I think most will agree that this
one particular aspect of the language has probably prevented it from
becoming the dominant language of the three.
Bob
[1] The most popular Ruby reference is available both as a paper book
and as an online reference here. Very well written.
http://www.rubycentral.com/book/index.html
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