In your opinion....

[Daniel Lewis]

In your opinion(s)....

What is ruby better for and why?
I am talking mainly about is Ruby better for web based development
(i.e. Ruby on Rails)? or other stuff, whether it be scientific,
business or technological?

Thank you all for your answers.

Daniel Lewis.

 

[Gennady Bystritksy]

In your opinion(s)....

What is ruby better for and why?
I am talking mainly about is Ruby better for web based development
(i.e. Ruby on Rails)? or other stuff, whether it be scientific,
business or technological?

Thank you all for your answers.

Daniel Lewis.

Too lazy to do your own research? It happens ;-). For a starter, check
out http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RealWorldRuby

Gennady.

 

[Daniel Lewis]

Too lazy to do your own research? It happens ;-). For a starter, check

out http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RealWorldRuby

Thats quite a good little page... thanks. However, I am asking you
lot, in your experience what is Ruby good for.

 

[Mike Pence]

I am new to Ruby, but its expressiveness as a language is profound.
So, I would say that any application where you want to achieve a high
level of functionality with a fraction of the lines of code and
overall effort of other approaches is a great fit for Ruby.

Of course, there are problem domains where Ruby is not a good fit. For
systems-level development, you want to use C or Assembler. For complex
mathematical modelling, there are functional programming languages
that are a better fit. But for most business and internet apps, Ruby
can't be beat.

Mike Pence

 

[Daniel Lewis]

"For complex mathematical modelling, there are functional programming lan= guages
that are a better fit."

OK I agree with what you say about this. But according to this site:
http://www.jvoegele.com/software/langcomp.html
Ruby has the ability to be used as a functional language (as well as
Smalltalk, Python, Perl and Eiffel).

In my final year of university (which starts in September 2006), I
will be learning Hugs (a Haskell varient) for Functional
Programming... it will be interesting how it compares to Ruby, and I
would like to learn how to use Ruby as a functional language.

I'll be using Ruby for my dissertation, I'll be developing some type
of program that uses Fuzzy Logic... possibly something to do with
Robotics, Agents or Control... not sure yet.

Please continue to discuss,

Thanks,

Daniel.

 

[Robert Klemme]

In your opinion(s)....

What is ruby better for and why?
I am talking mainly about is Ruby better for web based development
(i.e. Ruby on Rails)? or other stuff, whether it be scientific,
business or technological?

Do you mean better compared to language X or do you mean what application
area Ruby suits best?

IMHO it's very good for scripting and learning (programming in general and
especially OO).

Kind regards

robert

 

[Kevin Brown]

OK I agree with what you say about this. But according to this site:
http://www.jvoegele.com/software/langcomp.html
Ruby has the ability to be used as a functional language (as well as
Smalltalk, Python, Perl and Eiffel).

Yes, you can. The opinion expressed above was simply that those other
languages are a better fit.

In my final year of university (which starts in September 2006), I
will be learning Hugs (a Haskell varient) for Functional
Programming... it will be interesting how it compares to Ruby, and I
would like to learn how to use Ruby as a functional language.

Um....it's not hard...? Just don't define classes and do function calls.
It's like trying to "learn" how to use C++ as a functional language.
Eventually, everything collapses to a functional level because it has to to
get executed by the processor. One instruction at a time. So you just don't
use the extra OO framework built into ruby, instead pretending that def gives
you a function instead of a method.

I'll be using Ruby for my dissertation, I'll be developing some type
of program that uses Fuzzy Logic... possibly something to do with
Robotics, Agents or Control... not sure yet.

Cool.

 

[Mike Pence]

Specifically, I was thinking of whatever it is that Mathematica uses
and PL1 -- Ruby is declarative programming language with functional
aspects, but I don't think it is a purely functional programming
languages. Otherwise, wouldn't we be writing functions instead of
methods?

 

[Daniel Lewis]

Do you mean better compared to language X or do you mean what application

area Ruby suits best?

What application... but if you have made a tool in ruby and another
language... you could tell us about it.

Daniel.

 

[Rob Rypka]

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Thats quite a good little page... thanks. However, I am asking you
lot, in your experience what is Ruby good for.

If you watch this list for a while, you'll start to recognize some of the
names on that page .

Anyways, I've carrying around some loose change, so you can have my $0.02:

I am probably one of the few people on this list who haven't used Rails (I
installed it, and I intend to, but I'm too busy/lazy). I think that Ruby
excels in a number of areas.

The first is as a "glue language," which is something that Perl is generall=
y
attributed to. This usually involves text processing, and between the
Perl-like regular expressions features, OO and Mixins, and iterators/blocks=
,
this becomes cake.

An example: At work, we used Ruby to convert strace output from a build to =
a
list of compiler calls, so we could send them to another compiler-like tool=

 

[Phil Tomson]

In your opinion(s)....

What is ruby better for and why?
I am talking mainly about is Ruby better for web based development
(i.e. Ruby on Rails)? or other stuff, whether it be scientific,
business or technological?

Ruby has already proven quite successful for web development (via Rails). I
use Ruby for various scientific applications and for me it's been quite
successful, YMMV.

Phil

 

[Martin Ankerl]

What is ruby better for and why?

I think your question is a bit vague. For me, programming Ruby is
usually better than falling out of a flying plane without a parachute.
On the other hand, I usually prefer having a parachute with me than
programming Ruby when I am already in free fall.

 

[Warren Seltzer]

Ruby is NOT good for:

1) Writing Garbage Collectors or other memory allocators.
2) Ram tests.
3) Simulating the weather or designing A-bombs -- most of the stuff they do on a
super-computer.
4) Device Drivers.
5) Code that goes in ROM, or other embedded systems.
6) Winning the Obfuscated C contest.
7) Building SPAM systems to send out zillions of offensive e-mails.
8) Violating the laws of thermodynamics.

Warren Seltzer

 

[Justin Collins]

Ruby is NOT good for:

1) Writing Garbage Collectors or other memory allocators.
2) Ram tests.
3) Simulating the weather or designing A-bombs -- most of the stuff they do on a
super-computer.
4) Device Drivers.
5) Code that goes in ROM, or other embedded systems.
6) Winning the Obfuscated C contest.
7) Building SPAM systems to send out zillions of offensive e-mails.
8) Violating the laws of thermodynamics.

Warren Seltzer

Actually, I think Ruby would work quite well for #7........


uh, not that I uh would you know.

-Justin

 

[Christophe Grandsire]

=20
OK I agree with what you say about this. But according to this site:
http://www.jvoegele.com/software/langcomp.html
Ruby has the ability to be used as a functional language (as well as
Smalltalk, Python, Perl and Eiffel).
=20

Well, as long as one can do higher-order functions, one can eventually=20
program in a functional way. But not necessarily nicely .

In my final year of university (which starts in September 2006), I
will be learning Hugs (a Haskell varient) for Functional
Programming... it will be interesting how it compares to Ruby, and I
would like to learn how to use Ruby as a functional language.
=20

You'll find out Haskell is quite a different beast. It has interesting=20
features, but it doesn't have much in common with imperative languages=20
like Ruby. Its IO model is =FCbercool though (completely functional, whic=
h=20
is quite a feat, and basically making IO actions into objects rather=20
than actions. But if you really want to understand how it works, you=20
need to understand the monad, which is quite an esoteric mathematical=20
notion - and I'm someone who used to eat distributions for breakfast, so=20
abstract mathematical notions normally don't frighten me -).

Yet it's a great way to open your mind to other possibilities, and to a=20
language where space is meaningful which is not Python .

I'll be using Ruby for my dissertation, I'll be developing some type
of program that uses Fuzzy Logic... possibly something to do with
Robotics, Agents or Control... not sure yet.
=20

Interesting...
--=20
Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

 

[Rob Rypka]

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Actually, I think Ruby would work quite well for #7........


uh, not that I uh would you know.

-Justin

I just about had the same response (I, um, don't know either). Then I
started thinking...

<devil's advocate>
Wouldn't a goal of spam software be to load it onto someone else's machine
so you don't get caught (and for parallelism)? In order to get the maximum
return on this sort of program, you should target Windows boxes of
non-technical/home users - security is looser, and they probably won't
notice until it's too late (ISP b4|\|n4g3!). But, really, how many of these
machines are going to have Ruby installed? You're better off writing these
in some native Windows scripting thing - the code may be uglier, but it
would at least run...

Now, of course, Ruby would be great as a meta-programming language to
generate variations on these scripts!
</devil's advocate>

 

[John Carter]

What is ruby better for and why?

The perl folk describe perl as the Swiss Army chain saw.

Meaning it has as many uses as a Swiss Army knife that has many different
blades and gadgets and is powerful as a chain saw.

Ruby is like Perl but better.

ie. It is Very Good for Many purposes.




John Carter Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639
Tait Electronics Fax : (64)(3) 359 4632
PO Box 1645 Christchurch Email : (e-mail address removed)
New Zealand

Carter's Clarification of Murphy's Law.

"Things only ever go right so that they may go more spectacularly wrong later."

From this principle, all of life and physics may be deduced.

 

[Greg Loriman]

In your opinion(s)....

What is ruby better for and why?

Ruby is good at attracting bores. Notice how many people have replied to
your message with non-answers, perhaps supposed to be amusing, but really
just irritating and unfunny. Or worse, the presumptuous : "go and do your
homework". Makes me feel an unchristian desire to kill.

Perhaps this is the penalty of a geek language; the signal to bore ratio in
this group is not so good.

Coming back to your question : Ruby is nice, but don't get bamboozled by the
ruby crowd. Someone with a clear head needs to come along and critique the
language more objectively than I have seen so far. hOwever I'm not saying
its a bad langauge; far from it,

For example: although some would push Ruby for big projects there are
reasons to be circumspect about such a decision. Not being a Ruby expert I
cannot elaborate too much, except to say that there are some
industrial-strength-unfriendly-and-too-powerful-perhaps features in the
language, like C++ but much more elegant possibilities for self destruction.
The Rails project also needs proper examination. It seem like the soloution
to all our problems, the way people talk about it. But there are sounds from
the deep (the WWW) to think that it is not the solution to all our
problems. Again I am unable to elaborate, but you can look around.

So be careful of the ruby fanatics; they have funny starring eyes and froth
coming from their mouths, like mad dogs.

Greg

 

[Kev Jackson]

Ruby is good at attracting bores. Notice how many people have replied to
your message with non-answers, perhaps supposed to be amusing, but really
just irritating and unfunny. Or worse, the presumptuous : "go and do your
homework". Makes me feel an unchristian desire to kill.

Perhaps this is the penalty of a geek language; the signal to bore ratio in
this group is not so good.

Why would you say that ruby is a geek language? Are not all computer
languages at least a little geeky? And to be honest with you I find
this to be the opposite, there are far more people on this list who
(like myself) seem to have just started with ruby coming from
php/perl/$dynamic language than people with the deepest ruby knowledge
(although there are a few of those too).

If you want to see real evangilizing, drop in the rails mailing list

to answer the original question..

From my experience ruby is useful for data munging tasks, it's useful
for prototyping (rails is a good framework to build a little just to get
initial feedback from the customer).

They're the only things I've used ruby for so I'd be lying if I said
that you could program satellites/mars rovers/"enterprise thingies" etc.

On a personal note, I like it, I like it more than Java, more than C,
much more than VB or C#. It feels productive to me - no more
compililations is a good thing when you have to knock up a one-off
tool. On the other hand it's currently an interpreted language so for
certain classes of problem (HPC/TPC) it's probably not the best choice
yet. Still Lisp feels hyper-productive and can be compiled, Haskell
also feels good and you can compile that, but neither of them as as easy
to pick up as ruby, so it depends a lot on what you want

I'm going to use it to build up a small app that I've got 50% complete
in Java to try it in a different problem domain, I'll be initerested to
see how much difficulty I have with it there (UI+ natural language data
crunching)

Kev

 

[Devin Mullins]

For example: although some would push Ruby for big projects there are
reasons to be circumspect about such a decision. Not being a Ruby expert I
cannot elaborate too much, except to say that there are some
industrial-strength-unfriendly-and-too-powerful-perhaps features in the
language, like C++ but much more elegant possibilities for self destruction.

When I started out with Ruby, I had the same suspicions. Open classes,
no type declarations on method headers, require
'filename_instead_of_class_name', among others, scared me about using it
as part of a team. I did my best to investigate this to see if it rang
true -- my conclusion now is that Ruby is not a good idea if nobody has
any control over the team, and it's complete chaos. There are enough
harmful things that can be done, but are harder to do in whatever your
team already uses (if only because they know the language), that you
need a team to actually coordinate, and write unit tests, and rdoc
comments, and agree on certain standards, and review each other's code,
etc. But if you have that, it seems to me that Ruby would make the team
go much faster.

The Rails project also needs proper examination. It seem like the soloution
to all our problems, the way people talk about it. But there are sounds from
the deep (the WWW) to think that it is not the solution to all our
problems. Again I am unable to elaborate, but you can look around.

I can elaborate a little bit. The "sounds from the deep" mostly point to
a lack of JMS, JTA, an ESB. Instead, Rails & Ruby have different
solutions to asynchronous messaging, transactions, and distributed
processing -- and they may not be overly complex enough for your needs.
If you've got requirements for that sort of stuff, then...

So be careful of the ruby fanatics; they have funny starring eyes and froth
coming from their mouths, like mad dogs.

Actually, we're pretty reasonable.

And yes, I'll throw in a "Ruby is fantastic for prototyping, and then
realizing that your prototype is actually a fully-functional version of
the thing you were trying to mock up." But that took me, like, 2 days
to discover.

Devin "Mad Dog" Mullins