The Poetry of Code

[Curt Hibbs]

------=_NextPart_000_002B_01C4CCF4.5F3AEBC0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I loved this blog entry and I just had to share it with you!

Curt

===========================================================
http://rgcottrell.typepad.com/random/2004/11/the_poetry_of_c.html

November 17, 2004
The Poetry of Code
At work we've been developing some applications using the Ruby programming
language and the Ruby on Rails web application framework. I want to be a
skeptic. I want to dislike the language. I want to dismiss it as a simple
toy, an interesting intellectual exercise but not worthy of serious work.

Not like Java. Java is a serious language. I've wanted to do some serious
work in Java for a number of years now. My bookshelves at home are littered
with Java programming books. I even went to the JavaOne conference this
year. Still, I haven't managed to find time for any significant Java
programming, either professionally or on my own.

Java just feels like a real programming language with patterns and best
practices and code that goes on for miles. Boiler plate code has been raised
to a high art. Reading Java programs is like reading poetry. Java is an
epic, like the Odyssey. Writing a java program is a ten year journey to find
your way home.

Ruby isn't like that at all. Programs are small, concise, and eerily
expressive. Not like Java at all. I think I might need to look to Ruby's
Eastern origins. A haiku, perhaps:



a Ruby program
before I even notice
is already done

But I'm starting to come to terms with Ruby now. After spending several
hours yesterday tracking down a bug in the Rails framework I am much more
comfortable with the language and the framework. It's not perfect, and
somehow that makes me happy.

November 17, 2004 in Web/Tech | Permalink

------=_NextPart_000_002B_01C4CCF4.5F3AEBC0--

 

[Jason Sweat]

I loved this blog entry and I just had to share it with you!

Curt

Beautiful, thanks for sharing

Regards,
Jason

 

[Robert Klemme]

I loved this blog entry and I just had to share it with you!

Curt

Very nice! Thx

robert

 

[Kaspar Schiess]

a Ruby program
before I even notice
is already done

This has made it into my quote file

 

[David A. Black]

Hi --

I loved this blog entry and I just had to share it with you!

Curt

===========================================================
http://rgcottrell.typepad.com/random/2004/11/the_poetry_of_c.html

November 17, 2004
The Poetry of Code
At work we've been developing some applications using the Ruby programming
language and the Ruby on Rails web application framework. I want to be a
skeptic. I want to dislike the language. I want to dismiss it as a simple
toy, an interesting intellectual exercise but not worthy of serious work.

It's great that he got beyond this but it's disconcerting to think
that something or someone, somewhere, predisposed him to view Ruby in
this light in the first place. Well -- it's their loss.


David

 

[Francis Hwang]

On Nov 18, 2004, at 5:53 AM, David A. Black wrote:

It's great that he got beyond this but it's disconcerting to think
that something or someone, somewhere, predisposed him to view Ruby in
this light in the first place. Well -- it's their loss.

I won't speak for him, but I think it's a fairly widespread opinion. My
guess as to why is that people automatically think programming has to
be difficult (i.e. lots of static typing, necessity of expensive IDEs,
etc.) in order to be effective. Rubyists come along with their talk of
enjoying their work and serious Javaists think to themselves "That's
nice, but there's no way that would work at my serious company doing my
serious thing."

Francis

 

[James Britt]

Francis Hwang wrote:
...

I won't speak for him, but I think it's a fairly widespread opinion. My
guess as to why is that people automatically think programming has to be
difficult (i.e. lots of static typing, necessity of expensive IDEs,
etc.) in order to be effective. Rubyists come along with their talk of
enjoying their work and serious Javaists think to themselves "That's
nice, but there's no way that would work at my serious company doing my
serious thing."

Agreed. And I think it's the "scripting language" ghetto, and ignorance
about dynamic typing (which, in it's worst form, equates it with weak
typing), that keeps many people from appreciating Ruby (and other agile
languages as well).

Educating people on dynamic typing is important, but I think I'd be
happier if people would simply stop referring to Ruby as a "scripting"
language (too many pejorative connotations, right or wrong), and simply
described it as an *interpreted* language instead.

James

 

[Curt Hibbs]

Francis Hwang wrote:
...

Agreed. And I think it's the "scripting language" ghetto, and ignorance
about dynamic typing (which, in it's worst form, equates it with weak
typing), that keeps many people from appreciating Ruby (and other agile
languages as well).

Educating people on dynamic typing is important, but I think I'd be
happier if people would simply stop referring to Ruby as a "scripting"
language (too many pejorative connotations, right or wrong), and simply
described it as an *interpreted* language instead.

Actually, I liked what you said in your previous paragraph -- Ruby is an
"agile language"!

Curt

 

[Michael DeHaan]

Is excessive boilerplate of over-casty static languages really poetry?
I don't think so.

To put this in another light, maybe some people like reading Faulkner
for his overly winded and indirect prose, I don't. And that's why
I'm here

 

[Francis Hwang]

Is excessive boilerplate of over-casty static languages really poetry?
I don't think so.

To put this in another light, maybe some people like reading Faulkner
for his overly winded and indirect prose, I don't. And that's why
I'm here

Faulkner might be the wrong analogy, but then again I love both Ruby
code and Faulkner's books. Faulkner's stuff is florid but also without
the rigidity of Java ... you maybe could draw an analogy to Perl, which
seems to me to be practiced by people who love the code on its semantic
surface as opposed to whether it lets you get the job done elegantly.

If you had to draw a literary analogy from Java to an author, I'm not
certain who you'd pick ... somebody who was into logical rigor? Some of
the Nabokov I've read is like that, but then, I might just not be
grokking what I've read.

F.

 

[David A. Black]

Hi --

I loved this blog entry and I just had to share it with you!

Curt [...]

Ruby isn't like that at all. Programs are small, concise, and eerily
expressive. Not like Java at all. I think I might need to look to Ruby's
Eastern origins. A haiku, perhaps:



a Ruby program
before I even notice
is already done

Another characteristic of Ruby programs is that as you work on them,
more and more code disappears from the screen.... So maybe that poem
should really just be:

a Ruby program





David