8 ms·

Unholy: _why's Ruby to Python compiler

130 points by DanielRibeiro 16y ago

moron4hire 16y ago
_why was infinitely pragmatic. He serves as a constant, near daily inspiration to me, just because he programmed because he wanted to, because he loved it, not because it was his career.
- irfn 16y ago
  _why is indeed an inspiration to all of us. i always make sure that i point out "Poignant Guide to Ruby" and other _why's brilliance to ruby newbies.
- netghost 16y ago
  I think he may have been so whimsical that he popped out the other side of reality into the pragmatic.
keyle 16y ago
Is there any reason as to why this resurfaces from 2008? No pun intended.
- bootload 16y ago
  "... any reason as to why this resurfaces from 2008? ..." A practical reason: Ruby doesn't have the depth of Python libraries, get more done in less time.[0] A theoretical reason: reading through the docs you find that 'decompyle' is based on 'spark' (John Aycock's generic small languages compiler), learning new things about languages & compilers is good. A philosophical reason: studying _whys' code is like finding some lost Greek classic from the library of Alexandria. Worthy of reading, just to see how a hacker works this problem, thus making it timeless. [0] At the time the code was written.
SlyShy 16y ago
Sadly, this can't handle C extensions in either language, making it unable to port a lot of major libraries. Fun to play around with, though.
rbanffy 16y ago
In his comments, he says Ruby and Python programmers "battle" a lot. I love and use Python a lot and have a small dislike for Ruby's very irregular syntax, but nothing worth fighting for. But don't get me started on Java... ;-)
- chadcf 16y ago
  Heh, and I use Ruby a lot and find Python's syntax troublesome :) I do like the idea that we can all unite behind hatred of Java however. Although Groovy at least is a step up and would be my choice if I ever had to program Java under threat of death or dismemberment. Also I'd highly recommend the movie Python from 2000, starring none other than Wil Wheaton trying to defend the small town of Ruby from an attack by a giant Python.
  - itsnotvalid 16y ago
    Last time I tried Groovy I found that the speed of it is really the pain of using it. It was considerably slower than plain Java. I'd recommend Scala even if you skip all the functional parts of it (Clojure's too un-java to speak as an alternative.)
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      You kidding? Clojure is nice precisely because it's an un-Java as it can possibly be.
      - cycojesus 16y ago
        Exactly. If one want a Java-but-less-painful, Clojure ain't it.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        "Java-but-less-painful" makes every bit as much sense as "gently gouging out an eye" ;-)
    - 16y ago
phiggy 16y ago
If you like this, check out RubyPython[1], a project recently started by Aman Gupta, one of Github's new hires. 1: https://github.com/tmm1/rubypython https://github.com/tmm1/rubypython
- halostatue 16y ago
  This claim is incorrect: Aman Gupta did not create RubyPython, nor does he claim to (and Aman's repo linked above even shows that his repo is a fork of my repo). Aman has provided some comments, discussion, and code back to RubyPython over the last few days. I know this because I've been chatting with him and pulling his modifications back into the main GitHub repo[1] (which happens to be mine) and pushing them back into the canonical repo on Bitbucket[2] (which is the original creator's repo). RubyPython was created in 2008 by Zach Raines, rewritten to use FFI in late 2010. Steeve Morin forked it as Rupy (apparently with Zach's blessing as Zach pointed me to it when I posted a bug fix to Zach's code) earlier this year. I got involved shortly after Steeve's fork. After some discussion, we (Steeve, Zach, and I) unforked Rupy back into RubyPython and opened the project a bit wider. I'm currently working on a new release (0.5) that should be out later this week that unifies the two repositories and includes some fixes and enhancements by Aman. We're using Schacon's wonderful hg-git[3] for navigating between git and hg. [1] https://github.com/halostatue/rubypython https://github.com/halostatue/rubypython [2] https://bitbucket.org/raineszm/rubypython/ https://bitbucket.org/raineszm/rubypython/ [3] https://hg-git.github.com/ https://hg-git.github.com/
Montagist 16y ago
why the lucky stiff was like the BucketHead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead) or Daft Punk of programming. I like that - besides the mysterious persona thing - he also reserved the right to follow any tangent; He's a musician as well and made an album for one of his programming books if i'm not mistaken. If/when I release my programming mixtape - in which i'll spite hot fire about unit testing and my gripes with MVC - he'll definitely get a spot in the liner notes. haha :)

130 points by DanielRibeiro 16y ago

_why was infinitely pragmatic. He serves as a constant, near daily inspiration to me, just because he programmed because he wanted to, because he loved it, not because it was his career.

irfn 16y ago
_why is indeed an inspiration to all of us. i always make sure that i point out "Poignant Guide to Ruby" and other _why's brilliance to ruby newbies.
netghost 16y ago
I think he may have been so whimsical that he popped out the other side of reality into the pragmatic.

keyle 16y ago

Is there any reason as to why this resurfaces from 2008? No pun intended.

bootload 16y ago
"... any reason as to why this resurfaces from 2008? ..." A practical reason: Ruby doesn't have the depth of Python libraries, get more done in less time.[0] A theoretical reason: reading through the docs you find that 'decompyle' is based on 'spark' (John Aycock's generic small languages compiler), learning new things about languages & compilers is good. A philosophical reason: studying _whys' code is like finding some lost Greek classic from the library of Alexandria. Worthy of reading, just to see how a hacker works this problem, thus making it timeless. [0] At the time the code was written.

SlyShy 16y ago

Sadly, this can't handle C extensions in either language, making it unable to port a lot of major libraries. Fun to play around with, though.

rbanffy 16y ago

In his comments, he says Ruby and Python programmers "battle" a lot. I love and use Python a lot and have a small dislike for Ruby's very irregular syntax, but nothing worth fighting for. But don't get me started on Java... ;-)

chadcf 16y ago
Heh, and I use Ruby a lot and find Python's syntax troublesome :) I do like the idea that we can all unite behind hatred of Java however. Although Groovy at least is a step up and would be my choice if I ever had to program Java under threat of death or dismemberment. Also I'd highly recommend the movie Python from 2000, starring none other than Wil Wheaton trying to defend the small town of Ruby from an attack by a giant Python.
- itsnotvalid 16y ago
  Last time I tried Groovy I found that the speed of it is really the pain of using it. It was considerably slower than plain Java. I'd recommend Scala even if you skip all the functional parts of it (Clojure's too un-java to speak as an alternative.)
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    You kidding? Clojure is nice precisely because it's an un-Java as it can possibly be.
    - cycojesus 16y ago
      Exactly. If one want a Java-but-less-painful, Clojure ain't it.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        "Java-but-less-painful" makes every bit as much sense as "gently gouging out an eye" ;-)
  - 16y ago

phiggy 16y ago

If you like this, check out RubyPython[1], a project recently started by Aman Gupta, one of Github's new hires. 1: https://github.com/tmm1/rubypython https://github.com/tmm1/rubypython

halostatue 16y ago
This claim is incorrect: Aman Gupta did not create RubyPython, nor does he claim to (and Aman's repo linked above even shows that his repo is a fork of my repo). Aman has provided some comments, discussion, and code back to RubyPython over the last few days. I know this because I've been chatting with him and pulling his modifications back into the main GitHub repo[1] (which happens to be mine) and pushing them back into the canonical repo on Bitbucket[2] (which is the original creator's repo). RubyPython was created in 2008 by Zach Raines, rewritten to use FFI in late 2010. Steeve Morin forked it as Rupy (apparently with Zach's blessing as Zach pointed me to it when I posted a bug fix to Zach's code) earlier this year. I got involved shortly after Steeve's fork. After some discussion, we (Steeve, Zach, and I) unforked Rupy back into RubyPython and opened the project a bit wider. I'm currently working on a new release (0.5) that should be out later this week that unifies the two repositories and includes some fixes and enhancements by Aman. We're using Schacon's wonderful hg-git[3] for navigating between git and hg. [1] https://github.com/halostatue/rubypython https://github.com/halostatue/rubypython [2] https://bitbucket.org/raineszm/rubypython/ https://bitbucket.org/raineszm/rubypython/ [3] https://hg-git.github.com/ https://hg-git.github.com/

Montagist 16y ago

why the lucky stiff was like the BucketHead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead) or Daft Punk of programming. I like that - besides the mysterious persona thing - he also reserved the right to follow any tangent; He's a musician as well and made an album for one of his programming books if i'm not mistaken. If/when I release my programming mixtape - in which i'll spite hot fire about unit testing and my gripes with MVC - he'll definitely get a spot in the liner notes. haha :)