[ale] Ruby vs C, a non-technical chat

[Derek Atkins]

James Sumners <james.sumners at gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 9:19 AM, leam hall <leamhall at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     With Ruby, I can say "It's on the machines, so I can use it".
>
> That's an important bit of information. Under such circumstances my preference
> is for Python. I just like the language better (truly, I can't stand the sight
> of Ruby). As for contrived performance, they're pretty much even -- 
> http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/ruby.php

Strangely, I'm quite the opposite -- I can't stand the sight of Python!
(Syntactic whitespace??  YUCK -- Reminds me of RPG-2).

> One of the things to consider is who else will have to maintain your code?
> Which languages do they prefer or are proficient with? Around my shop we've had
> a Ruby guy leave which meant all his stuff died because no one knows the
> language (or cares to).

I spent a few months teaching myself Ruby and RoR a few years ago.  I
actually like the Ruby language a lot; it has all the best features from
many different langauges thrown together.  My biggest beef with RoR,
however, is that it's a constantly moving target.  If I write a RoR app
today and use a bunch of gems, if I want to then share that development
with another group it's just... hard!  Every system needs to have the
exact same environment.  And then god help you if you need to pick up a
system a year later; everything has moved on and you can't get the old
gems anymore and the new gems have changed something fundamental such
that your app doesn't work...  :-(

So you're basically in a situation where you're constantly using
bleeding-edge code because if you don't (and don't keep up) you get
stuck.

But this has nothing to do with Ruby as a language.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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