Asp Forum - Reasons to consider learning Ruby?

Preston Crawford

1/21/2005 10:16:00 PM

I'm completely new to Ruby and Python. I'd like to learn another language
I currently know most of the Microsoft mainstays like VB, C#, ASP,
VBScript as well as JavaScript, Java, PHP, etc. I'm interested in learning
another scripting language, mostly for fast proto-typing and also because
I have a gut feeling, that at least in Open Source circles, languages like
Python and Ruby are starting to pick up steam for glueing together
applications. Now with the news on Slashdot about Rails (as a web
developer by profession) Ruby has gained my attention.

So I'm wondering, for what reasons should I consider learning Ruby? I'm a
"Big Book" type of guy. I love buying one of those tree-killers and diving
into a new language. I'm trying to decide whether my next language to
learn will be Ruby or Python. I already know a bit about what makes Python
good. So my question to you guys is, why Ruby?

Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these
things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I
know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to
replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle
(i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in
this regard?

Thanks!

Preston

16 Answers

Tim Hunter

1/21/2005 10:35:00 PM

Gennady

1/21/2005 10:49:00 PM

Preston Crawford wrote:
> I'm completely new to Ruby and Python. I'd like to learn another language
> I currently know most of the Microsoft mainstays like VB, C#, ASP,
> VBScript as well as JavaScript, Java, PHP, etc. I'm interested in learning
> another scripting language, mostly for fast proto-typing and also because
> I have a gut feeling, that at least in Open Source circles, languages like
> Python and Ruby are starting to pick up steam for glueing together
> applications. Now with the news on Slashdot about Rails (as a web
> developer by profession) Ruby has gained my attention.
>
> So I'm wondering, for what reasons should I consider learning Ruby? I'm a
> "Big Book" type of guy. I love buying one of those tree-killers and diving
> into a new language. I'm trying to decide whether my next language to
> learn will be Ruby or Python. I already know a bit about what makes Python
> good. So my question to you guys is, why Ruby?
>
> Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these
> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I
> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to
> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle
> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in
> this regard?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Preston
>

Buy yourself a "Big Book" called "Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic
Programmers' Guide" by Dave Thomas and get enlightened ;-). You can get
the book at http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/catalog/...

Alternatively, you can search the ruby-talk archives at
http://www.ruby-talk.org/ruby/ruby-talk/i...

for something like "Ruby vs. Python". You will find a lot of "why Ruby"
reasons there.

Read, compare, decide for yourself. Do not expect anybody to set you on
"the right road".

Gennady.

P.S. Your post is very generic and smells like a troll (I beg your
pardon if it is not), so do not expect a lot of responces here, people
are just tired.

Joao Pedrosa

1/21/2005 11:03:00 PM

Hi,

> So my question to you guys is, why Ruby?
>
> Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these
> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I
> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to
> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle
> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in
> this regard?

As some people might say, this has been discussed before so
comp.lang.ruby can be searched on google. :-)

But I believe in Ruby and the people that make Ruby what it is. If you
consider that people have different abilities and motivations, then
you might imagine that the people that make Python are different than
the people that make Ruby.

That said, i think that the code on the core and the libs of Ruby are
very high level and very open for use. Couple that with the nice mix
of features that are unique of Ruby, then you have a killer base for
new software.

One inspired programmer created the base of the Rails framework. So it
may take one inspired programmer for every library that we may ever
need. If you don't find your killer library, build it with Ruby,
enjoying what's available already. Join forces with the community if
you ever need.

In the end, it's about getting inspired. :-)

Cheers,
Joao

Preston Crawford

1/21/2005 11:20:00 PM

On 2005-01-21, Gennady Bystritksy <gfb@tonesoft.com> wrote:
> Buy yourself a "Big Book" called "Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic
> Programmers' Guide" by Dave Thomas and get enlightened ;-). You can get
> the book at http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/catalog/...

Thanks!

> Alternatively, you can search the ruby-talk archives at
> http://www.ruby-talk.org/ruby/ruby-talk/i...

Thanks again!

> Read, compare, decide for yourself. Do not expect anybody to set you on
> "the right road".

Of course. I wasn't expecting all the answers. And believe me, I Googled
this topic to death. The problem is, that it always seems to end up in...

"Python is more mature"
"Ruby is more fun"
"Python has more libraries"

...etc etc

I'm coming at this as someone who really likes the look of Ruby and I
guess I'm trying to find out if investing time in learning it (aside from
just what you gain from learning the language) is worth it in terms of
things you can actually do with it and how easily they can be done. I know
that's a little vague, but I meant it to be vague, mostly, minus the last
part.

> P.S. Your post is very generic and smells like a troll (I beg your
> pardon if it is not), so do not expect a lot of responces here, people
> are just tired.

Understood. It's definitely not a troll, though. No offense take. I
understand how these things go (especially after Googling). If you reread
my last part of my post, that should tell you that I'm 100% serious about
hearing about how Ruby is being used out in the real world and what Ruby
developers think of its chances. By that I mean that any time one learns a
language there's obviously an investment in time if you want to get
something out of it. Since I don't know Python, nor Ruby, but have
leanings towards Ruby, my question was born out of sincere interest to
know what some of you thought its future held, in particular as a language
to develop desktop applications that need to be developed quickly. It
looks to me like both Python and Ruby have a bright future, not just as
web languages, but also in the afforementioned capacity, as languages to
do RAD work where you don't want to use VB or you want to move away from
VB or VC++. That's my primary interest and thus the reason I asked what
you all thought of its future in that regard.

Preston

Preston Crawford

1/21/2005 11:24:00 PM

On 2005-01-21, Joao Pedrosa <joaopedrosa@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> So my question to you guys is, why Ruby?
>>
>> Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these
>> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I
>> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to
>> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle
>> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in
>> this regard?
>
> As some people might say, this has been discussed before so
> comp.lang.ruby can be searched on google. :-)

Of course. I've Googled this topic thoroughly. And (as mentioned in my
other response) the conclusions reached are generally the same. So the
tie-breaker from me, aside from how enjoyable a language is to use, is
what the future of the language holds. Thus my last paragraph. I'm
interested in learning a langauge where there's at least some potential
that down the road I might be able to use this do the same kind of work
that is done on the Microsoft side of the world with VB. i.e. Quick RAD
using a good quality language with hooks into a decent GUI toolkit. This
is the part I don't know as much about Ruby or Python. Other than I'm
aware that Python has pyQT, etc. But I have leanings towards Ruby, just in
terms of syntax and the way the language is constructed. That's why I
asked here.

> But I believe in Ruby and the people that make Ruby what it is. If you
> consider that people have different abilities and motivations, then
> you might imagine that the people that make Python are different than
> the people that make Ruby.
>
> That said, i think that the code on the core and the libs of Ruby are
> very high level and very open for use. Couple that with the nice mix
> of features that are unique of Ruby, then you have a killer base for
> new software.

That's what I gather. I've done Java for years. But sometimes you just
want to get things done. Thus my interest.

> One inspired programmer created the base of the Rails framework. So it
> may take one inspired programmer for every library that we may ever
> need. If you don't find your killer library, build it with Ruby,
> enjoying what's available already. Join forces with the community if
> you ever need.
>
> In the end, it's about getting inspired. :-)

Thank you! That helps.

Preston

Stephan Kämper

1/21/2005 11:30:00 PM

Preston Crawford wrote:
> So I'm wondering, for what reasons should I consider learning Ruby? I'm a
> "Big Book" type of guy. I love buying one of those tree-killers and diving
> into a new language. I'm trying to decide whether my next language to

It seems that the 'pickaxe' is for you. You can get it at:
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/...

It's up to date (covers Ruby 1.8.x) and really really well written.
It has a 'tutorial style' part as well as a reference to the Ruby
standard library.

> learn will be Ruby or Python. I already know a bit about what makes Python
> good. So my question to you guys is, why Ruby?

These are my reasons:
- The community is friendly, helpful and open minded
- It's easy to learn
- For me it works well on both 'unixoide' OSes and Windows
- It's readable code with out much 'noise' (semicolons,
parentheses...)
- It doesn't enforce one single program layout (indentation,
parentheses...)
- There's 'test/unit', YAML, RedCloth, Rails (you mentioned it),
RDoc, ri and oh-so-many useful (and easy to use too) libs etc.
- A lot of Design Patterns are 'built in' or easy to realize
(Visitor, Observer, Delegator...)
- It's a very dynamic language
- It's fun to work with
- I get things done right in a short time (among other things
thanks to 'test/unit')
- It fits my way of thinking

> Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these
> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I
> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to
> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle
> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in
> this regard?

Good question. I don't think Ruby will replace any of the
extremely-wide-spread languages any time soon. And I don't mind. In
fact, I think an extremely larger Ruby community would (at least) tend
to be less kind, less helpful and less responsive.

Happy rubying

Stephan

Alexander Kellett

1/21/2005 11:40:00 PM

On Jan 22, 2005, at 12:25 AM, Preston Crawford wrote:
> Of course. I've Googled this topic thoroughly. And (as mentioned in my
> other response) the conclusions reached are generally the same. So the
> tie-breaker from me, aside from how enjoyable a language is to use, is
> what the future of the language holds. Thus my last paragraph. I'm
> interested in learning a langauge where there's at least some potential
> that down the road I might be able to use this do the same kind of work
> that is done on the Microsoft side of the world with VB. i.e. Quick RAD
> using a good quality language with hooks into a decent GUI toolkit.
> This
> is the part I don't know as much about Ruby or Python. Other than I'm
> aware that Python has pyQT, etc. But I have leanings towards Ruby,
> just in
> terms of syntax and the way the language is constructed. That's why I
> asked here.

ruby has qtruby. if you have time. compare the sources.
you'll understand afterwards why you should choose ruby :)
clever people gather around ruby for some reason, i'm yet
to understand why this is. i guess its something about ruby :)

Alex

Florian Gross

1/21/2005 11:44:00 PM

Preston Crawford wrote:

> Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these
> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I
> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to
> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle
> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in
> this regard?

See http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?Rea... for how Ruby is getting
used. Lately we have received lots of coverage because of the wonderful
Rails framework, there's lots of interesting applications getting
implemented in it like for example 43things.com.

I think we'll continue to grow rapidly in that direction, though I'm
pretty sure we can also do well in other areas.

Regarding rapid development of desktop GUIs you might be interested in
http://developer.kde.org/language-bind...,
http://visualwx.alter... and Glade in combination with Ruby-GTK2.
(wxWidgets looks native on pretty much all platforms and GTK2 can at
least look native on Windows as well.)

Personally, I've used Ruby in lots of areas successful already and am
pretty sure that the language will continue to grow.

Other than that just enjoy yourself and don't worry too much about the
future. After all making the future happen is one of the things that's
fun to do with Ruby.

Nicholas Van Weerdenburg

1/22/2005 1:36:00 AM

Hi Preston,

I just started learning Ruby and a bit of Python last year, and I'll
share my experience.

Personally, I found comparing Ruby to Python a bit awkward. I read the
great Ruby Python comparisons on various wikis, but some how kept
ending up on Lisp pages (more later).

As for the direct comparison, there was the "more OO", "more fun",
"less libraries" aspect, but I really got a sense of why I liked Ruby
when I started looking at Smalltalk and Lisp.

1. most of the same language dynamic language benefits of python (a
rough and brutal summary- Perl in a readable, maintainable and OO
form)
2. more OO
3. more expression-oriented (python seperates expressions and statements).

Nothing that was earth shattering to me, but I was an OO enthusiast,
and quite liked Perl and it's conciseness, so Ruby looked nice, not
yet considering libraries, existing apps, and industry acceptence.

What really made it click for me was looking at Smalltalk and Lisp
comparisons. Ruby has been called both Smalltalk-inspired and an
infix-notation dialect of Lisp. That enables:

4. creating DSLs (domain specific languages)
A paraphrasing a comment on slashdot on the rails article today- if
Python didn't have list comprehensions already, it would nearly
impossible to add them. If ruby didn't, it would be fairly easy.

and
5. bottom-up programming to coincide with top-down. This somewhat
implies implementing a custom DSL as your program your application.

Paul Graham was useful in considering these:
Bottom-up programming:
http://www.paulgraham.com/pr...

What Made Lisp Different:
http://www.paulgraham.com...

Succinctness is Power
http://www.paulgraham.com/...

Ultimately, DSL+succintness (and indirectly expresion-orientation)
made me choose Ruby. I don't know if this is the incredible benefit as
postulated by Graham. There are links to strong Lisp people defending
Python at the bottom of articles. But ultimately, I find it fits my
mind and how I like to think about programming.

Don't know much Python yet, but plan to learn some in a few months
time permitting to compare. I'm also learning some Scheme and
Smalltalk to inform my Ruby programming.

And as for the Ruby libraries, I love them and haven't found too many
things that I'm missing for my needs.

Regards,
Nick
--
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:20:57 +0900, Preston Crawford
<me@prestoncrawford.com> wrote:
> I'm completely new to Ruby and Python. I'd like to learn another language
> I currently know most of the Microsoft mainstays like VB, C#, ASP,
> VBScript as well as JavaScript, Java, PHP, etc. I'm interested in learning
> another scripting language, mostly for fast proto-typing and also because
> I have a gut feeling, that at least in Open Source circles, languages like
> Python and Ruby are starting to pick up steam for glueing together
> applications. Now with the news on Slashdot about Rails (as a web
> developer by profession) Ruby has gained my attention.
>
> So I'm wondering, for what reasons should I consider learning Ruby? I'm a
> "Big Book" type of guy. I love buying one of those tree-killers and diving
> into a new language. I'm trying to decide whether my next language to
> learn will be Ruby or Python. I already know a bit about what makes Python
> good. So my question to you guys is, why Ruby?
>
> Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these
> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I
> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to
> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle
> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in
> this regard?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Preston
>
>

RCS

1/22/2005 3:08:00 AM

If an advice from a newly converted Python to Ruby programmer (I have
used Python for more than 6 years) is of any worth:

go with Ruby!

Ruby is simply a better designed language, better syntax, a more truly
object-oriented language, and as far as libraries goes, Ruby catches on
fast.

RCS

comp.lang.ruby

Reasons to consider learning Ruby?

Preston Crawford

Tim Hunter

Gennady

Joao Pedrosa

Preston Crawford

Preston Crawford

Stephan Kämper

Alexander Kellett

Florian Gross

Nicholas Van Weerdenburg

RCS

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