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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Ruby still an OOP language? so in a way, there is no "new ways" of programming so to speak. Just that Ruby is dynamic wherea

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Ruby still an OOP language? so in a way, there is no "new ways" of programming so to speak. Just that Ruby is dynamic whereas C-based family languages aren't.

palish 19y ago
Ruby's main advantage is that they've nailed the syntax sugar in all the right places. For example, given function foo: foo() is equivilant to foo Also, code blocks are specified outside the function argument list. Something that looks like this in javascript: foo(a,b,c,d,function() { console.log("some callback") }) would look like this in Ruby: foo(a,b,c,d) do puts "some callback" end or even just: foo(a,b,c,d) { puts "some callback" } That last one isn't a function definition.. it's a function call equivalent to the example before it. It's mostly the fact that it -looks- cleaner in all the right places that makes it appealing. That and the massively powerful web framework built on top of it.
- hello_moto 19y ago
  But Ruby is still OOP right? And these syntatic sugars don't really change the way people program in a hardcore way no? Basically this is another way to make your loop looks nicer but nothing more. You could argue this case if the language in the topic is something like LISP or Haskell compare to the C-based languages.
  - palish 19y ago
    But.. Erm.. making a program nicer is the sole purpose of all high level programming languages. Programmers read a lot more than they code. The nicer it makes your program, the more powerful it is.
    - gscott 19y ago
      As pretty as it may be, picking a language is an important choice, the oldest web application I have designed has already been online for 7 years and I expect it to last more or less forever. So making a choice of language is important, jumping on the bandwagon of the latest and greatest (and it does sound pretty good) might be a problem later on. My point was more about making a long term decision.
      - davidw 19y ago
        This is a calculation that depends entirely on your circumstances. As a startup, you want to get the best product out to as many people as fast as possible, 7 years in the future be damned. Other circumstances (such as being a big corporation) demand more attention to other aspects such as maintainability.
  - DocSavage 19y ago
    There's more to a language than whether it's object-oriented or not. It sounds like you are saying, well it's just OOP so it's not any different than C++. It's almost like saying "CLOS is still OOP, right?" Yes, Ruby is dynamic. It's so dynamic that you have open classes so you can dynamically insert methods. It has deep introspection. It has closures. It has #method_missing which lets you do some interesting things. Basically, Ruby is just powerful enough, just over that tipping point, so programmers wind up doing metaprogramming (programs that write programs) more than they would in other languages. I'm sure Paul Graham has an article or two on the power of languages (smiley face here), and in at least one of them, he suggests that some people might mistake Ruby for a dialect of LISP. See why_the_lucky_stiff's tutorial on D&D metaprogramming (Dwemthy's Array section at http://qa.poignantguide.net/chapter-6.html http://qa.poignantguide.net/chapter-6.html) and Rich Kilmer's use of Ruby for an aircraft management DSL (you'll have to google for that example). It's not that metaprogramming is impossible in C/C++ because you could always build a whole mechanism from the ground-up. (In other words, at some point you can claim that all these languages are Turing equivalent if I remember correctly.) The point is that some languages make interesting ways of programming easier, and when you hang out among the practioners of that language, you begin to see different ways of coding. This is why I've got Erlang on my TODO list, if I can squeeze it in my schedule.
- stuki 19y ago
  " foo() is equivalent to foo " Man, I hate that 'feature' of Ruby. In Python, foo is the function, foo() the result of calling it. So much cleaner.
rzwitserloot 19y ago
'C-based family languages"? Objective C is fully dynamic. Typing is entirely optional. If you give every type declaration the type 'id', it's effectively the same as using 'var' in e.g. javascript. I'm not sure what you mean by C-based, but I'm guessing ObjC would fall in your definition.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Ruby still an OOP language? so in a way, there is no "new ways" of programming so to speak. Just that Ruby is dynamic whereas C-based family languages aren't.

palish 19y ago

Ruby's main advantage is that they've nailed the syntax sugar in all the right places. For example, given function foo: foo() is equivilant to foo Also, code blocks are specified outside the function argument list. Something that looks like this in javascript: foo(a,b,c,d,function() { console.log("some callback") }) would look like this in Ruby: foo(a,b,c,d) do puts "some callback" end or even just: foo(a,b,c,d) { puts "some callback" } That last one isn't a function definition.. it's a function call equivalent to the example before it. It's mostly the fact that it -looks- cleaner in all the right places that makes it appealing. That and the massively powerful web framework built on top of it.

hello_moto 19y ago
But Ruby is still OOP right? And these syntatic sugars don't really change the way people program in a hardcore way no? Basically this is another way to make your loop looks nicer but nothing more. You could argue this case if the language in the topic is something like LISP or Haskell compare to the C-based languages.
- palish 19y ago
  But.. Erm.. making a program nicer is the sole purpose of all high level programming languages. Programmers read a lot more than they code. The nicer it makes your program, the more powerful it is.
  - gscott 19y ago
    As pretty as it may be, picking a language is an important choice, the oldest web application I have designed has already been online for 7 years and I expect it to last more or less forever. So making a choice of language is important, jumping on the bandwagon of the latest and greatest (and it does sound pretty good) might be a problem later on. My point was more about making a long term decision.
    - davidw 19y ago
      This is a calculation that depends entirely on your circumstances. As a startup, you want to get the best product out to as many people as fast as possible, 7 years in the future be damned. Other circumstances (such as being a big corporation) demand more attention to other aspects such as maintainability.
- DocSavage 19y ago
  There's more to a language than whether it's object-oriented or not. It sounds like you are saying, well it's just OOP so it's not any different than C++. It's almost like saying "CLOS is still OOP, right?" Yes, Ruby is dynamic. It's so dynamic that you have open classes so you can dynamically insert methods. It has deep introspection. It has closures. It has #method_missing which lets you do some interesting things. Basically, Ruby is just powerful enough, just over that tipping point, so programmers wind up doing metaprogramming (programs that write programs) more than they would in other languages. I'm sure Paul Graham has an article or two on the power of languages (smiley face here), and in at least one of them, he suggests that some people might mistake Ruby for a dialect of LISP. See why_the_lucky_stiff's tutorial on D&D metaprogramming (Dwemthy's Array section at http://qa.poignantguide.net/chapter-6.html http://qa.poignantguide.net/chapter-6.html) and Rich Kilmer's use of Ruby for an aircraft management DSL (you'll have to google for that example). It's not that metaprogramming is impossible in C/C++ because you could always build a whole mechanism from the ground-up. (In other words, at some point you can claim that all these languages are Turing equivalent if I remember correctly.) The point is that some languages make interesting ways of programming easier, and when you hang out among the practioners of that language, you begin to see different ways of coding. This is why I've got Erlang on my TODO list, if I can squeeze it in my schedule.
stuki 19y ago
" foo() is equivalent to foo " Man, I hate that 'feature' of Ruby. In Python, foo is the function, foo() the result of calling it. So much cleaner.

rzwitserloot 19y ago

'C-based family languages"? Objective C is fully dynamic. Typing is entirely optional. If you give every type declaration the type 'id', it's effectively the same as using 'var' in e.g. javascript. I'm not sure what you mean by C-based, but I'm guessing ObjC would fall in your definition.