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Ruby Ruby Ruby For some reason I feel this taints me with a stereotype that doesn't necessarily fit, so (somewhat defensively) I'd like to preempt that by sayi

Ruby Ruby Ruby For some reason I feel this taints me with a stereotype that doesn't necessarily fit, so (somewhat defensively) I'd like to preempt that by saying I've been writing code for the last 25 years (give or take a year or two). Also, I've never been to Starbucks and I don't use TextMate (but I do own an aging MacBook).

hartror 16y ago
I was under the impression that Ruby doesn't fit the kitchen sink aspect of the list. It certainly is a bankable language right now, especially if you are a web dev, and it seems to make lots of people happy. But my impression is the library support is still in the growing stage compared to perl/python.
- swombat 16y ago
  Ruby gems provide enormous amount of functionality. You can do almost anything you want with Ruby, and even when there isn't a library to do exactly what you want, there are enough supporting libraries for you to quickly write the library you need.
  - hoggle 16y ago
    I concur writing new gems is a good idea as CPAN is often the only reason I have to return to perl for some quick tasks. As CPAN is the grandfather of all package management systems and probably of (inet) shared libraries too it is perfectly clear why rubygems lacks the amount of available solutions to certain problem spaces. Doesn't mean we cannot get there some day :) So I'd say I. let's build more & sometimes better gems and II. use wrappers for C libs where money/time constraints are too significant to DIY (e.g. https://github.com/ffi/ffi/wiki/Basic-Usage https://github.com/ffi/ffi/wiki/Basic-Usage ) Bottom line: try to share and contribute whenever possible. Love your language diversity :)
- Argorak 16y ago
  That may be true in the "Rails ecosystem", but Ruby has a really vibrant community of people writing tiny gems for everything. It rarely has one accepted library for one problem, usually, there are 2 or 3. Actually, as a Rubyist, I do feel the same issue when using Python: I don't know my way around the community, thus I never find the hidden gems or which libraries are hot (or not). I thinks its more a problem of perspective then reality. Granted, no one can match Perl in that respect :).
- Throlkim 16y ago
  The number of available and useful gems makes Ruby my favourite for the kitchen sink. I recently had to build a web spider very quickly for a concept, and there was a gem that provided a multi-threaded spider. Obviously, Ruby wouldn't be my choice for an actual production spider for larger projects, but it let me get a prototype done very quickly :)

hartror 16y ago

I was under the impression that Ruby doesn't fit the kitchen sink aspect of the list. It certainly is a bankable language right now, especially if you are a web dev, and it seems to make lots of people happy. But my impression is the library support is still in the growing stage compared to perl/python.

swombat 16y ago
Ruby gems provide enormous amount of functionality. You can do almost anything you want with Ruby, and even when there isn't a library to do exactly what you want, there are enough supporting libraries for you to quickly write the library you need.
- hoggle 16y ago
  I concur writing new gems is a good idea as CPAN is often the only reason I have to return to perl for some quick tasks. As CPAN is the grandfather of all package management systems and probably of (inet) shared libraries too it is perfectly clear why rubygems lacks the amount of available solutions to certain problem spaces. Doesn't mean we cannot get there some day :) So I'd say I. let's build more & sometimes better gems and II. use wrappers for C libs where money/time constraints are too significant to DIY (e.g. https://github.com/ffi/ffi/wiki/Basic-Usage https://github.com/ffi/ffi/wiki/Basic-Usage ) Bottom line: try to share and contribute whenever possible. Love your language diversity :)
Argorak 16y ago
That may be true in the "Rails ecosystem", but Ruby has a really vibrant community of people writing tiny gems for everything. It rarely has one accepted library for one problem, usually, there are 2 or 3. Actually, as a Rubyist, I do feel the same issue when using Python: I don't know my way around the community, thus I never find the hidden gems or which libraries are hot (or not). I thinks its more a problem of perspective then reality. Granted, no one can match Perl in that respect :).
Throlkim 16y ago
The number of available and useful gems makes Ruby my favourite for the kitchen sink. I recently had to build a web spider very quickly for a concept, and there was a gem that provided a multi-threaded spider. Obviously, Ruby wouldn't be my choice for an actual production spider for larger projects, but it let me get a prototype done very quickly :)