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

[leam hall]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 12:58 PM, Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net> wrote:

> Responding to, 'With Ruby, I can say "It's on the machines, so I can use
> it"'...
>
> If you write a Ruby script, that script has to be deployed to the target
> where it will run, so that's one file being added that wasn't on the
> machines before.
>
> If you write a Go program and compile it, you get a statically linked
> executable (if you are using regular go), which is also one file that has
> to be deployed to the target where it will run.
>
> Either way, you have to add one file that wasn't there to the target
> machine.  So if you don't install the Go build tools on the targets, the
> distinction isn't significant.
>
> This is an advantage Go has over a lot of other compiled languages.  It
> avoids some of the dependency hell that motivated people to adopt Docker
> and containers.  It's kind of ironic.
>

Ed, sorry if I'm confused. If I compile a Go program and drop it on a
server without any other Go tools, the program will run? That assumes it's
not calling anything else, but something like "Hello world!"?

The C advantage is that you can pretty much assume the needed stuff is
there. With Ruby, you have to install the interpreter. If you use the
system's Ruby version you have to spend 3-5 lines of IRC chat explaining
one more time why you aren't interested in updating to the latest Ruby on
hundreds or thousands of machines, just so your simple script can run.

Leam

-- 
Mind on a Mission <http://leamhall.blogspot.com/>
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