.... was when I finally set down to learn Ruby..... WHOWWWWWWWWWWWW!
Within two weeks from picking up my first tutorial, I accomplished the
following:
* created a Ruby extension for acessing the Firebird database
* created C++ extension for financial calculations (option pricing,
implied volatility etc)
* put together a small "trading" application that downloads a
stock/optionpricing page, using regex extracts prices, calculates the
option pricing and various option related data (the Greeks), pulls some
additional info from the Firebird database.
The application performs all this WITHIN A SECOND OF TWO!!!!
Now this last thing really surprises me, the blazing speed Ruby (with
the C++ extension) performs! Who said Ruby was slow?
(I clocked the same downloading and pulling of data with Regex in
Python, and Python performed almost twice as slow as Ruby.)
I must say, the simplicity, the ease and the "it just works" of it all,
makes Ruby my most pleasant surprise in the year that passed.
I'm ditching Python (my long-standing friend) for Ruby, that's definite!
RCS