Comments on: Clueless, Unclear, or Both on Ruby?

By: James

James — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:39:32 +0000

Damn are talented programmers destined to pointless bickering on blogs? Ruby is good, Java is good, everything is useful for someone. Even visual basic.

By: cpp

cpp — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:48:36 +0000

Hey java smart-arse … you suck big time because you all make waves arround your java java java … and want to control everything just like your microsnoft neighbour … yoiu should realy try to put your hands on some real stuff … like c/c++, objective C …
It’s realy easy to open up eclipse and play the smart-arse with how cool java is and how cool groovy is … wake up, php is there since … many years … and most of the web development is done in php, nowdays ruby and python seem to catch up to this …. but hey, … nobody is showing that superior arrogant attitude like the java guys do … I mean … come on … i understand that many ibm years and a lot of bloated enterprise sh_t has passed through your hands … all these acronyms … all these app servers that require expensive hardware to run … my guess is that you’re just the victims of a super-evaluated marketing campaign … taht almost brainwashed you …
Remember the KISS principle ? … nevermind
virtual machines suck … there’s no direct memory acces, no pointers, no fun P
Cheers

By: online typing jobs

online typing jobs — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:29:45 +0000

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typing jobs at home

By: billburke

billburke — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:41:00 +0000

Although type safety would be a strong enough reason not to use Ruby (or Python, PHP, etc…) Other suckies? No Annotations (correct me if I’m wrong only glanced quickly). As Jason Greene would say, “It is painful for me to write code in languages that assign special meaning to whitespace”. So, if I had to code in anything besides Java, I’d probably do it in Groovy.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:27:33 +0000

Okay strong dynamic typing == good. Lack of type checking is bad. Sometimes “Variants” are useful though (esp for binding). But Ruby doesn’t suck just because of one thing :-). In fact as I said Java has a lot to learn from Ruby in terms of API design IMO. Your API design looks a lot more like Ruby than like JCP-java.

You’re doofy with “the language is the most popular runtime of the language” only a java developer would think that there are “scripting langauges” and non-scripting languages.

You got it wrong or I messed up the grammar, I said “Ruby needs the JVM (for Ruby) to not suck”. Being a VM buff, I don’t think you really think that I think the VM sucks. I do however think Java classloading sucks, but so do most people (and I think I just quoted Scott). More clearly I think that tying type to classloaders to encapsulate the concept of “isolates” is a mistake and that the implementation at the VM level of classloaders is poorly done..

By: billburke

billburke — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:34:10 +0000

Andy, what I think you don’t get is that I messed up by bashing typeless Ruby (when its not) and then you got me twisted around saying what I didn’t like was dynamic typing, when what I really didn’t like was the lack of type-safety. I fucked up all the vocabulary. I do like limited dynamic typing, ala AOP introductions. I agree with you that using Javassist to do this stuff is really a workaround, but all that has nothing to do with my original argument. Type-safety is a must.

IMO, Ruby is just another scripting language (yes, one that could be JITed, but WTF cares?). No I don’t have an open mind on it because, well, as I said before, I’ve already been there with Python (worked on a python project off and on for over a year), Tcl, Perl, VB and even a little bit PHP. I’ve also done Vax Assembly, DCL, cshell, Fortran, Ada, C and C++ at previous jobs. The one I’m missing though is Smalltalk. Developers whose programming foundation was built upon Smalltalk, IMO, code very differently than the rest of us and approach problems differently as well.

And, BTW, just because something has a bug, a bug that may have caused you problems doesn’t mean it sucks. So, the JVM doesn’t suck. You suck. Name a better more mature VM out there.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:04:25 +0000

Well for the record, you still don’t quite get it, but maybe I’m not explaining it well. It isn’t that “types are hard let’s get rid of them” it is that static typing and lack of a language meta-model is rather limiting and a lot of what you’ve spent a lot of time doing is working around that. Moreover, DAMN Flex’s (ECMAScript) REST support via dynamic objects and binding is EASY and requires next to NO code. I do create types out of it, but for the transport it is SOOO nice. The idea is that with a more dynamic language you can BUILD a type and avoid JavaAssist and classloader foo and other things that while “neat” are hacks around limitations in Java. The other thing is that if you code even a little bit in Ruby (not talking about Rails and ActiveRecord/bla which blow frankly) you’ll find that forget the “scriptiness” of it…they lack that JCP feel of the APIs where you don’t have to get a factory to get a locator to get a factory to an object.. Do a simple socket send and receive in Ruby and you’ll see what I mean. Its cleaner API design done better. Java has a lot to learn from Ruby and Ruby needs the JVM to not suck :-)… I’m just saying…Java ain’ all that and playing with other languages keeps you fresh and open minded and makes you a better developer

By: billburke

billburke — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:13:22 +0000

One jab removed, i’ll leave the “not wanted” comment for reference though.

BTW, I never thought you were ‘nobody’. I just plainly forgot you had left. I tried to make up for it with a later post on that TSS thread, but muffed that up too.

By: billburke

billburke — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:03:40 +0000

Maybe I am white bearded, but its not like I have never coded with one of these languages. Adding all these type declarations doesn’t hurt my productivity, I don’t understand what the fuss is. Yeah, maybe a poorly skilled developer would have an easier time not worrying about type, but then bad code still is bad code you have to maintain. Declaring types just makes it a little bit easier to dive in and figure out what these unskilled developers have actually written.

I’ll strike out some of my jabs if you want to….Not angry anymore

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:36:49 +0000

One thing I know…bah…

Okay so what about ECMAScript? You don’t HAVE to (in which case the type is Object) but you CAN and most often do/should:

var foo = new Object();
var bar:Bla = new Bla();

In some cases the type declaration is fairly redundant though (the above cases for instance). You sound kind of white bearded.

I’m insecure? You went personal just because I argued with you! I was just interested in the intellectual debate… I’ve had to use Vista for nearly a week and haven’t been able for various logistic reasons (involving my regular laptop’s like 4th trip to the repair shop and bad network speed) to write much Buni stuff. So I was looking for a little mental stimulation…instead I get personal jabs…sheesh.

BTW Thanks for the plug.