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Rich Kilmer: Ruby's Best Feature

40 points by luccastera 18y ago

river_styx 18y ago
Ruby scales? I thought the entire tech community had already taken Twitter as a lone example and proof that Ruby doesn't scale. Edit: I was being ironical here.
- wayne 18y ago
  Ruby != Rails
  - qqq 18y ago
    Ruby and Rails shouldn't be constants.
sant0sk1 18y ago
"syntax-driven development" Interesting methodology I'd never considered. Great read, thanks for posting.
- Xichekolas 18y ago
  I have often tried to make DSLs for projects, but I have generally always tried to design the DSL from the start... I had (sadly) never considered just writing as if your DSL already existed, then go back and actually implement it. This is great, because what you write initially is basically what you need to implement your DSL via TDD. In this case the code written in the DSL represents your unit tests for the code implementing the DSL. Now I just need a project I can try this on. Not sure why I never tried it that way before. Seems like a much better approach than 'designing' a DSL in a top-down manner.
- raganwald 18y ago
  http://www.infoq.com/presentations/agile-dsl-development-in-ruby http://www.infoq.com/presentations/agile-dsl-development-in-...
omouse 18y ago
I'm very curious as to why Ruby was used instead of something like Erlang which was explicitly (roughly) designed for the situation he describes.
- llimllib 18y ago
  Well, according to the article it's because it is easy to generate DSLs with, which Erlang is not. Am I missing anything?
- iloveyouocean 18y ago
  Erlang = easy to parallelize computer operations. Ruby = easy to parallelize development. In a situation where you have plenty of money (like DARPA) and therefore plenty of hardware, people are the bottleneck. This article is about diminishing the people bottleneck, which is the actual 'situation he describes'.
- babo 18y ago
  Hmmm, you mean Haskell? Erlang is not designed for that kind of job, it's far from appropriate for that kind of work.
ced 18y ago
I thought Ruby and Python were roughly isomorphic. Is there anything drastically different about Ruby's syntax? I wish he'd given an example. BTW, if I recall correctly, this is what PG calls "wishful thinking"-oriented development in On Lisp (actual words may differ, but "wishful" should be in there)
- raganwald 18y ago
  I thought Ruby and Python were roughly isomorphic. Outside of the trivial matter of Turing equivalence, Ruby and Python strike me as being dissimilar on all but the most superficial level, both as languages and as cultures. Ruby aids and abets designing your own syntax, functional programming, anonymous classes, and extremely late binding. Python either explicitly rejects such things or makes them more difficult. Meanwhile, Python shows evidence of having paid attention to ideas invented since Lisp and Smalltalk were the new kids on the block, including things like generators and list comprehensions. JM2C, I am not an expert in either language.
  - ced 18y ago
    Ruby aids and abets designing your own syntax But... how? Can you give an example? And by isomorphic, I mean that, given a finite number of "utilities" one could translate line for line a Ruby program into a Python program, and still get, maybe not a fully Pythonic program, but close enough. I thought, using this metric, C < Python, Ruby < Lisp
    - raganwald 18y ago
      I have found a remarkable proof that Ruby aids and abets writing your own domain-specific languages, but the margin is too small to write it out. Actually, I have found this to be true and you will also find the OP makes this exact point. Google ruby and DSL and you will find hundreds of examples. While argumentum ad popularum is a fallacy, I think we have are safe in saying Ruby encourages this. Whether the resulting DSLs are any good is another question. And by isomorphic, I mean that, given a finite number of "utilities" one could translate line for line a Ruby program into a Python program, and still get, maybe not a fully Pythonic program, but close enough. I thought, using this metric, C < Python, Ruby < Lisp I don't think this is true. I have a strong feeling that Ruby allows certain things that would require whole-program rewriting to redo in Python, and certainly the reverse is true. Generators from Python and the various metaprogramming callbacks from Ruby come to mind. Certainly you can translate from one to the other, but I don't think the resulting rewriting will be entirely local.

40 points by luccastera 18y ago

Ruby scales? I thought the entire tech community had already taken Twitter as a lone example and proof that Ruby doesn't scale. Edit: I was being ironical here.

wayne 18y ago
Ruby != Rails
- qqq 18y ago
  Ruby and Rails shouldn't be constants.

sant0sk1 18y ago

"syntax-driven development" Interesting methodology I'd never considered. Great read, thanks for posting.

Xichekolas 18y ago
I have often tried to make DSLs for projects, but I have generally always tried to design the DSL from the start... I had (sadly) never considered just writing as if your DSL already existed, then go back and actually implement it. This is great, because what you write initially is basically what you need to implement your DSL via TDD. In this case the code written in the DSL represents your unit tests for the code implementing the DSL. Now I just need a project I can try this on. Not sure why I never tried it that way before. Seems like a much better approach than 'designing' a DSL in a top-down manner.
raganwald 18y ago
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/agile-dsl-development-in-ruby http://www.infoq.com/presentations/agile-dsl-development-in-...

omouse 18y ago

I'm very curious as to why Ruby was used instead of something like Erlang which was explicitly (roughly) designed for the situation he describes.

llimllib 18y ago
Well, according to the article it's because it is easy to generate DSLs with, which Erlang is not. Am I missing anything?
iloveyouocean 18y ago
Erlang = easy to parallelize computer operations. Ruby = easy to parallelize development. In a situation where you have plenty of money (like DARPA) and therefore plenty of hardware, people are the bottleneck. This article is about diminishing the people bottleneck, which is the actual 'situation he describes'.
babo 18y ago
Hmmm, you mean Haskell? Erlang is not designed for that kind of job, it's far from appropriate for that kind of work.

ced 18y ago

I thought Ruby and Python were roughly isomorphic. Is there anything drastically different about Ruby's syntax? I wish he'd given an example. BTW, if I recall correctly, this is what PG calls "wishful thinking"-oriented development in On Lisp (actual words may differ, but "wishful" should be in there)

raganwald 18y ago
I thought Ruby and Python were roughly isomorphic. Outside of the trivial matter of Turing equivalence, Ruby and Python strike me as being dissimilar on all but the most superficial level, both as languages and as cultures. Ruby aids and abets designing your own syntax, functional programming, anonymous classes, and extremely late binding. Python either explicitly rejects such things or makes them more difficult. Meanwhile, Python shows evidence of having paid attention to ideas invented since Lisp and Smalltalk were the new kids on the block, including things like generators and list comprehensions. JM2C, I am not an expert in either language.
- ced 18y ago
  Ruby aids and abets designing your own syntax But... how? Can you give an example? And by isomorphic, I mean that, given a finite number of "utilities" one could translate line for line a Ruby program into a Python program, and still get, maybe not a fully Pythonic program, but close enough. I thought, using this metric, C < Python, Ruby < Lisp
  - raganwald 18y ago
    I have found a remarkable proof that Ruby aids and abets writing your own domain-specific languages, but the margin is too small to write it out. Actually, I have found this to be true and you will also find the OP makes this exact point. Google ruby and DSL and you will find hundreds of examples. While argumentum ad popularum is a fallacy, I think we have are safe in saying Ruby encourages this. Whether the resulting DSLs are any good is another question. And by isomorphic, I mean that, given a finite number of "utilities" one could translate line for line a Ruby program into a Python program, and still get, maybe not a fully Pythonic program, but close enough. I thought, using this metric, C < Python, Ruby < Lisp I don't think this is true. I have a strong feeling that Ruby allows certain things that would require whole-program rewriting to redo in Python, and certainly the reverse is true. Generators from Python and the various metaprogramming callbacks from Ruby come to mind. Certainly you can translate from one to the other, but I don't think the resulting rewriting will be entirely local.