On 21/02/2007, at 12:54 AM, Daniel Stenning wrote: > Is Ruby quicker and easier to program in than RB ?
The "pragmatic programmers" seem to think it's a great language. I do a lot of work in Python, again mostly non-GUI work, and the ease of test-driven-development there is considerably more productive than coding in anything else including RB. Note that an excellent environment (Active State's Komodo) makes a difference. Komodo is a Python, Ruby, XSLT etc. IDE. The Artima weblog discussion 'What are your Ruby Pain Points?" may help you http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=195717 My bottom-line for both Python and Ruby is that neither comes close to REALbasic for GUI app productivity, even using wxPython as a cross- platform framework which is a nicer experience than using wxWidgets with c++. However, if you need to write some data crunching logic, I'd lean to Python over REALbasic. It's sufficiently close that there's little dissonance moving back and forth. Ruby is like a cleaner, more OO- pure Perl so code tends to look weird to REALbasic/Java/C++ eyes. In the domain of web apps however, one big advantage Ruby has over Python is not being sensitive to whitespace formatting. The indentation-driven syntax of Python doesn't mix well with the templating approach of much web processing, mixing code with bits of HTML etc. Finally, an excellent book that I wish I'd written is Code Generation in Action which uses Ruby as its core language. It's the sort of book I recommend all programmers should read. Generative approaches are a tool you should have in your kit and this is a great example of using generation across a range of domains. regards Andy _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
