Asp Forum - Article on ARTIMA

Peter Hickman

9/29/2003 3:19:00 PM

There is the start of a series of articles on ARTIMA with Matz.

www.artima.com

However they interleave (!) their interviews and publish one a week so you
will have to keep comming back. But that is not a bad thing, this is a very
good site even if you are not a Java programmer with many lenghty interviews
top language designers.

18 Answers

Peter C. Verhage

9/29/2003 5:22:00 PM

Yukihiro Matsumoto: "... But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how
humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the
machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves."

Bill Venners: For the time being anyway.

Yukihiro Matsumoto: For the time being anyway, until the age of Terminator.

LOL :)

Ben Giddings

9/29/2003 6:06:00 PM

Peter C. Verhage wrote:
> Yukihiro Matsumoto: For the time being anyway, until the age of Terminator.

Heh. Isn''t it great? Ruby is fun to write, and Matz is fun to read. :)

I guess one reason I like Ruby is because I agree with him on so many
points. Programming should be flexible and fun. You shouldn''t think too
much about what the computer is doing under the hood. Doing something
simple should be simple. I also like that he''s very honest that Ruby is
designed by him for him, and if it works well for other people that''s
great, but it really is his language and if it doesn''t act the way you
expect, want, or hope... well make your own language!

Ben

Bob X

9/30/2003 9:16:00 PM

From the talkback:

"Ruby is over 10 years old, very popular in Japan, gaining popularity in
other parts of the world, have thousands of users and hundreds of hackers.
However, the implementation (Ruby has only 1 currently, written in C) is
pretty weak. It''s slow, does not support native threads, does not do JIT
compilation (not even bytecode), needs a better GC, etc. It is especially so
if we compare it with Java and Smalltalk, who have gotten real good
implementations (JIT compilers, fast GC, threads, etc) nowadays."

Comments?

ptkwt

9/30/2003 9:36:00 PM

In article <0omeb.3608$qK1.3702438@news2.news.adelphia.net>,
Bob X <bobx@linuxmail.org> wrote:
>From the talkback:
>
>"Ruby is over 10 years old, very popular in Japan, gaining popularity in
>other parts of the world, have thousands of users and hundreds of hackers.
>However, the implementation (Ruby has only 1 currently, written in C) is
>pretty weak. It''s slow, does not support native threads, does not do JIT
>compilation (not even bytecode), needs a better GC, etc. It is especially so
>if we compare it with Java and Smalltalk, who have gotten real good
>implementations (JIT compilers, fast GC, threads, etc) nowadays."
>
>Comments?
>
>

I saw this comment as well. I think it''s a valid concern. In the area of
performance Ruby is falling behind. Smallscript shows that you can have
high-performance dynamic language implementations.

Let''s hope that Rite comes along soon...

Phil

Sean O'Dell

9/30/2003 9:52:00 PM

Bob X wrote:

>>From the talkback:
>
> "Ruby is over 10 years old, very popular in Japan, gaining popularity in
> other parts of the world, have thousands of users and hundreds of hackers.
> However, the implementation (Ruby has only 1 currently, written in C) is
> pretty weak. It''s slow, does not support native threads, does not do JIT
> compilation (not even bytecode), needs a better GC, etc. It is especially so
> if we compare it with Java and Smalltalk, who have gotten real good
> implementations (JIT compilers, fast GC, threads, etc) nowadays."

Let me also add that hand-grenades make terrible hammers. Discuss.

Sean O''Dell

kingsley

9/30/2003 10:05:00 PM

Well I don''t know if this comment is factually correct or whether it is just a
re-iteration of an anti-ruby chinese whisper.

But If David Garamond the author is right in what he says, then I would much
prefer people to aknowledge this and work to improve it, than retort with
over-exaggerated claims about how wrong he is.

Positive criticism should be welcomed, embraced and seen as an opportunity for
advancement.

Thats my thoughts anyway

Kingsley

On Tuesday 30 September 2003 22:19, Bob X wrote:
> From the talkback:
>
> "Ruby is over 10 years old, very popular in Japan, gaining popularity in
> other parts of the world, have thousands of users and hundreds of hackers.
> However, the implementation (Ruby has only 1 currently, written in C) is
> pretty weak. It''s slow, does not support native threads, does not do JIT
> compilation (not even bytecode), needs a better GC, etc. It is especially
> so if we compare it with Java and Smalltalk, who have gotten real good
> implementations (JIT compilers, fast GC, threads, etc) nowadays."
>
> Comments?

Ben Giddings

9/30/2003 10:41:00 PM

Bob X wrote:
> From the talkback:
>
> "Ruby is over 10 years old, very popular in Japan, gaining popularity in
> other parts of the world, have thousands of users and hundreds of hackers.
> However, the implementation (Ruby has only 1 currently, written in C) is
> pretty weak. It''s slow, does not support native threads, does not do JIT
> compilation (not even bytecode), needs a better GC, etc. It is especially so
> if we compare it with Java and Smalltalk, who have gotten real good
> implementations (JIT compilers, fast GC, threads, etc) nowadays."
>
> Comments?

Slow: yup, slower than Python, C, Assembly and most other things... not a
big issue for me most of the time, however.

Does not support native threads: not a major issue for me, but maybe for
some people it is.

Does not do JIT compilation or bytecode: nope... not a major issue for me

Needs a better GC: really? Not for me.

All in all, I think the criticisms are valid, but I don''t care. The way I
use Ruby these problems haven''t come up. It''s like someone saying that my
swiss army knife doesn''t have a saw. If I ever need a saw that will make
my swiss army knife less useful, but until I need one, it doesn''t really
interest me.

I think the 10 years of development is a bit of a red herring though. I
don''t know how intense the development has been over those 10 years, but it
is now at version 1.8, wheras Python is at 2.3 and Perl is at 5.8. For an
open-source type project where there is one main developer, no massive
funding, etc. it isn''t surprising that certain tweaks (JIT, bytecode,
speed) haven''t been added yet. I''d be curious to see how Ruby 1.8 fares
against Python 1.8 (if it existed) though.

I am curious though. Regarding Ruby the environment, rather than Ruby the
language, what is it that people would most want? Native threads?
Bytecode compilation? Speed increases? More memory-efficient GC?

Ben

Thomas Sondergaard

9/30/2003 11:07:00 PM

First, let me say that the original posting very clearly represents my
sentiments. Ruby the language rocks, the implementation... not so much.

> Slow: yup, slower than Python, C, Assembly and most other things... not a
> big issue for me most of the time, however.

Me neither, but without even thinking contientiously about it runtime
performance has influence on when I find ruby suitable for a project. If
ruby could be made a faster performer it would make more projects ruby
projects.

> Does not support native threads: not a major issue for me, but maybe for
> some people it is.

On Windows threading is *the* issue, if you ask me. It simply doesn''t work.
It is incredibly counter-intuitive, as a thread model, that a *blocked*
thread prevents the other threads from running. Bizarre. Perfectly
comprehensible considering the implementation, but it just makes threading
on windows suck.

> Does not do JIT compilation or bytecode: nope... not a major issue for me

Well who cares how it is implemented, you already addressed your lack of
concern for the runtime speed.

> Needs a better GC: really? Not for me.

I was not aware of this problem either.

> ... I''d be curious to see how Ruby 1.8 fares
> against Python 1.8 (if it existed) though.

You know that different projects assign version numbers differently. It is
way more fair to count the number of years a language has existed. In the
end it only matters to you what is a fair comparison because you (and I)
love ruby. To everyone else only one thing matters: what is best for them
now!

> I am curious though. Regarding Ruby the environment, rather than Ruby the
> language, what is it that people would most want? Native threads?
> Bytecode compilation? Speed increases? More memory-efficient GC?

1) Native threads.
1.1) A thread safe interpreter.
2) Speed (somehow, don''t care, bytecode, jit, whatever)

But then again, we can talk all we want, we are getting all this for free
and getting smarter for working with it, and I for one am very grateful for
all of it, even if there are a few blemishes on this particular ruby
(implementation).

Cheers,

Thomas

Lothar Scholz

10/1/2003 12:01:00 AM

Hello Bob,

Tuesday, September 30, 2003, 10:19:15 PM, you wrote:

>>From the talkback:

BX> "Ruby is over 10 years old, very popular in Japan, gaining popularity in
BX> other parts of the world, have thousands of users and hundreds of hackers.
BX> However, the implementation (Ruby has only 1 currently, written in C) is
BX> pretty weak. It''s slow, does not support native threads, does not do JIT
BX> compilation (not even bytecode), needs a better GC, etc. It is especially so
BX> if we compare it with Java and Smalltalk, who have gotten real good
BX> implementations (JIT compilers, fast GC, threads, etc) nowadays."

BX> Comments?

100% ACK. The poster described the technical problems of ruby very
well. And they are a reason for not choosing the language in some
projects.

I really don''t like native threads programming at the low level that
most languages offer (introduced 30 years ago - mutexes, semaphores
etc). Eiffel and TCL have much better way separating
threads and using message passing as the only way for communication.
I wish someone would take a look at TCL how to implement it, but the
current C implementation of ruby is such a hack that it is impossible to
add something like this.

And another thing is very important and should really be done if ruby
wants to escape the hacker world:

A Formal description of the language (you know the "language lawyer"
section of the python documentation). JRuby and Ruby are not the same
in some details and this is the result of the lack of specification.

--
Best regards,
Lothar mailto:mailinglists@scriptolutions.com

Hal E. Fulton

10/1/2003 1:21:00 AM

Lothar Scholz wrote:
> And another thing is very important and should really be done if ruby
> wants to escape the hacker world:
>
> A Formal description of the language (you know the "language lawyer"
> section of the python documentation). JRuby and Ruby are not the same
> in some details and this is the result of the lack of specification.

This interests me. David Alan Black and I have discussed it more
than once.

But I''m not sure Matz likes the idea of a formal language spec. Or
perhaps he would say the spec already exists, and it is written
in C.

Matz? What would you think of a formal spec as long as 1) the content
was OK''d by you and 2) you didn''t have to write it?

Hal

comp.lang.ruby

Article on ARTIMA

Peter Hickman

Peter C. Verhage

Ben Giddings

Bob X

ptkwt

Sean O'Dell

kingsley

Ben Giddings

Thomas Sondergaard

Lothar Scholz

Hal E. Fulton

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